Epicurus Quotes

Quotes by and about Epicurus

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Epicurus: "Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency."

Epicurus: "When it is time for us to go ... we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well."

Epicurus: "Skillful sailors get their reputation from crossing storms and hurricanes."

Epicurus: "Anger and partiality [both] imply weakness."

Epicurus: "If sight, association, and intercourse are removed, the passion of love is ended."

Epicurus: "At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business."

Epicurus: "If the anger of parents against their children is justified, it is quite pointless for the children to resist it and to fail to ask forgiveness. If the anger is not justified but is unreasonable, it is folly for an irrational child to appeal to someone deaf to appeals and not to try to turn it aside in other directions by a display of good will."

Epicurus: "In our study ... follow the promptings of the facts."

[To a follower:]
Epicurus: "I congratulate you on being untainted by any education."

Friedrich Nietzsche: "I know of nothing more stinging than the joke that Epicurus made on Plato. ... He called him an actor; pointed out that there was nothing genuine about his wisdom."