“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its discontents
Post: On Taking Responsibility
“We are not meant to be perfect.”
Bruce Lee, Be Water My Friend
Post: Be Water my friend, book review
“The Usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness”
Bruce Lee, Be Water My Friend
Post; Be Water My Friend
“In life, what can you ask for but to fulfil your potential and be real!”
Bruce Lee, Be Water My Friend
Post: Be Water My Friend
“Know Thyself”
Apollo’s temple at Delphi
Post: What is Wisdom
“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world.”
Plato, The Republic
Post: What is Justice
“There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.”
Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
Post: On Having Regrets
“The response to losses is stronger than the response to corresponding gains. This is loss aversion.”
Daniel Khaneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, P. 282-283
Post: What is Privilege
“He who knows he has enough is right.”
Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
Post: Become Financially Independent Through Stoicism
“Know Thyself”
Maxim at Apollo’s Temple in Delphi
Post: How to Know Yourself
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Unknown, falsely attributed to Aristotle
Post: How to Know Yourself
“Feedback is a present, you have to learn how to unwrap it.”
Unknown teacher
Post: How to Deal with Criticism Through Stoicism
“Relationship is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself – to be is to be related.”
Bruce Lee, Be Water, My Friend, Chapter 4
Post: How our Mirror Fails to Reflect
“We strengthen our character through the habitual practice of sound moral habits, called ethical or human virtues.”
Alexander Havard, Virtuous Leadership
Post: Stoicism the Wrong Way: A Psychological Perspective
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, ch. 4
Post: Stoicism the Wrong way: A Spychological Perspective
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
John Lennon, Song: Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), min: 2:19
Post: Why Death Needs Rebranding
“…the determination was that friendship is said in three ways. For one of them is determined based on virtue, one on that of the useful, and one of the pleasant. Among these, the one based on the useful is that between most people, for they love each other because and insofar as they are useful, as the proverb has it: “Glaucus, an ally’s friends, so long he fight,” and “Athenians no longer acknowledge Megarians.” The friendship of the young is the one based on pleasure, for that is what they have perception of. Hence the friendship of the young is unstable, for as their characters change with their ages so does the pleasant. But the friendship based on virtue is that of the best men.”
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, Book VII, Chapter 2, 1236a30
Post: What is True Friendship
“To the query, “What is a friend?” his reply was, “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
Aristotle, according to Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 5, Chapter 1.20
Post: What is True Friendship
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert, Dune
Post: How to Deal with Fear Like a Stoic
“Philosophers do, perhaps, say what is contrary to common opinion, but not what is contrary to reason.”
Cleanthes, by Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 4.1, 173
Post: What is Success: A Stoic View
“He (Epictetus) does not have in mind the gods of conventional Greek and Roman religion, but rather the god of Stoic theory, who stands for the order and rationality that are inherent in the universe.”
Christopher Gill, Epictetus, The Discourses, Introduction, 11
Post: What is the Stoic God
“…the existence of gods involves the fact that he governs, or rather is, the cosmos, which explains why some of the proofs for the existence of god simply amount to proofs that the cosmos itself is a rationally ordered living being.”
Keimpe Algra, The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Stoic Theology, p. 160
Post: What is the Stoic God
“Similarly, the Stoic sage is the equal of God, since God is nothing other than universal reason, producing in self-coherence all the events of the universe.”
Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel, Stoicism of Epictetus
Post: What is the Stoic God
Definition of Rejection: “the act of refusing to accept, use, or believe someone or something”
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rejection
Post: How to Deal with Rejection
“As researchers have dug deeper into the roots of rejection, they’ve found surprising evidence that the pain of being excluded is not so different from the pain of physical injury.”
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/rejection
