Epicurean Quotes

• The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.

  Epicurus

  Infinity, Wealth, Easy

  "Principal Doctrines". Translated by Robert Drew Hicks,

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• I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

  Epicurus

  Appreciate, Atheism, Crowds

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• Don't fear god, Don't worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure

  Epicurus

  Worry, Easy, Endure

  Epicurus, Brad Inwood, Lloyd P. Gerson “The Epicurus Reader”, Hackett Publishing

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• The Epicureans denied that the gods had created the world and also denied that they played any role in it.

  Catherine Wilson

  Roles, World, Denied

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Inspire, Infidelity, World

  "Ranke's History of the Popes" by Thomas B. Macaulay, "Edinburgh Review", October, 1840.

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• The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.

  Epicurus

  Life, Gratitude, Lying

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• Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

  Epicurus

  God, Spiritual, Religious

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• I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Greek, Religion

  "The Real Thomas Jefferson".

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• Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

  Epicurus

  Atheist, Faith Religion, Omnipotence

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• Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

  Epicurus

  Atheist, Omnipotence, If There Is A God

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• A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Stoic, Born

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• I love good food. I’m an epicurean, that’s for sure. … But I am not really a good cook.

  Gaspard Ulliel

  Good Food, Cooks, Good Cook

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• I sort of have a love affair with my work. Many of us work far too hard and we don't put enough value in the epicurean, sensual part of life.

  Kim Cattrall

  Life Is Hard, Sensual, Affair

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• He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing .

  Epicurus

  Littles, Satisfied

  Epicurus (1993). “The essential Epicurus: letters, principal doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments”

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• It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.

  Epicurus

  Men, Able, Impossible

  "Principal Doctrines". Translated by Robert Drew Hicks,

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• Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.

  Epicurus

  Stranger, Pleasure, Wells

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• What you see is what you get.

  Flip Wilson

  Cheer, Gossip Girl, Love Life

  "Character: Geraldine". "Flip", TV Series, www.imdb.com. 1970-1974.

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• There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

  Georg Buchner

  Christ, Crude, Refined

  "Danton's Death". Play by Georg Buchner, Act I, 1835.

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• Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.

  Jo Walton

  Attitude, Reading, Earning

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• Even if the gods did exist, the Epicureans argued, they didn't care about us. Rather, everything comes from nature, and all that really exists are atoms and void, moving and congregating.

  Catherine Wilson

  Moving, Atoms, Care

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The basic idea that the purpose of life is to be happy or is to experience the most favorable ratio of pleasure to suffering or productivity to work or gratification to sacrifice or any of that stuff, which, you know, a couple generations ago, to say that kind of stuff would have made you, you know, a freak - a freak and an Epicurean - and now seems to be so much - simply an unquestioned assumption of the culture that we don't really even talk about it anymore.

  David Foster Wallace

  Couple, Sacrifice, Ideas

  Source: news.stlpublicradio.org

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• Order can arise from chaos without anyone or anything directing the process when unstable combinations of atoms perish and others persist. In the 17th century, Descartes applied this insight to cosmology, and long before Darwin presented his more rigorous ideas about variation and selection, people began to speculate more openly about the origins of life and the species in Epicurean terms.

  Catherine Wilson

  Origin Of Life, Order, Ideas

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Aristotle saw nature as intelligent and purposive, whereas for the Epicureans, and the 17th century 'mechanical' philosophers, there is no intentionality in nature except where there are animal minds and bodies.

  Catherine Wilson

  Animal, Intelligent, Mind

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.

  Catherine Wilson

  Stars, Space, Doctrine

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Some critics thought the ontology and theory of qualities absurd. No one had ever seen these little atoms, and furthermore, how could their mere arrangement produce a noisy, colourful, world in which day followed night and animals generated their own kind? Instead of a world created, cared, for and supervised by supernatural persons, the Epicureans appeared to the theologians to be assigning everything to chance. The latter were appalled by Lucretius's view of religion as cruel and oppressive and by the Epicurean insistence that death is the end of all experience.

  Catherine Wilson

  Animal, Night, Views

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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