Quotes About Epicurus

Thus Democritus and Epicurus, [16] who maintained that everything throughout infinity suffereth renewal and restoration, understood these matters more truly than those who would at all costs maintain belief in the immutability of the universe, alleging a constant and unchanging number of particles of identical material that perpetually undergo transformation, one into another.

Epicurus summed up his whole philosophy in his epitaph: 'I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind' If

Another way Epicurus thought he could cure his followers of their fear of death was by pointing out the difference between what we feel about the future and what we feel about the past.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not. Epicurus

We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them." Epicurus, then, is no epicurean; he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quiet and appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but ataraxia—tranquillity, equanimity, repose of mind;

Friendship dances around the world announcing to all of us that we must wake up to blessedness.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

Death is meaningless to the living because they are living, and meaningless to the dead… because they are dead.

When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist.

I was still more concerned (a preference which you may be far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted with him.

[Epicurus] set forth what is the highest good, towards which we all strive, and pointed out the past, whereby along a narrow track we may strain on towards it in a straight course.

Those desires that do not bring pain if they are not satisfied are not necessary; and they are easily thrust aside whenever to satisfy them appears difficult or likely to cause injury.

We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing.

There is nothing to fear from gods, There is nothing to feel in death, Good can be attained, Evil can be endured.

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily. Epicurus taught: Pleasure, defined as freedom from pain, is the highest good.

We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more. You don't control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things off, and each of us dies without truly living. —Epicurus, Principal Doctrines

Not only was the theory of evolution not invented by Darwin himself; it wasn't invented by his Enlightenment predecessors either. It was invented by Epicurus (looking back to Democritus and others) and popularized by Lucretius.

Not only was the theory of evolution not invented by Darwin himself; it wasn't invented by his Enlightenment predecessors either. It was invented by Epicurus (looking back to Democritus and others) and popularized by Lucretius. It wasn't and isn't a new, modern discovery. It is simply one part of one ancient worldview.