Through first principles. Which should govern your
intentions and your actions.
—What principles?Those to do with good and evil. That nothing is good
except what leads to fairness, and self-control, and courage,
and free will. And nothing bad except what does the
opposite.
- For every action, ask: How does it affect me? Could I
change my mind about it?
But soon I’ll be dead, and the slate’s empty. So this is the
only question: Is it the action of a responsible being, part of
society, and subject to the same decrees as God?
- Alexander and Caesar and Pompey. Compared with
Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates? The philosophers knew the
what, the why, the how. Their minds were their own.
The others? Nothing but anxiety and enslavement.- You can hold your breath until you turn blue, but they’ll
still go on doing it. - The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all.
And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like Hadrian,
like Augustus.