Democritus Quotes on Virtue
Democritus of Abdera (c.460–c.370 BC) — the Pre-Socratic atomist who together with his teacher Leucippus founded the atomistic philosophical tradition — gave classical Greek thought one of its earliest sustained philosophical treatments of virtue alongside its more famous physical doctrine. The surviving ethical fragments develop the central commitment that genuine human well-being (euthymia, cheerfulness) consists in the steady internal disposition of the soul rather than in any external good, with the corresponding cardinal virtues understood as the rational dispositions through which the soul preserves itself in this stable condition against the disturbances of fear, greed, and immoderate desire. The framework, drawing on the broader Pre-Socratic tradition of practical philosophical wisdom, supplied a principal source for the later Hellenistic ethics of ataraxia developed by Epicurus and the Stoic alternative, and remains the principal early statement of the eudaimonist conception of virtue.
Quotes
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“The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures.”
The brave man is not only he who overcomes the enemy, but he who is stronger than pleasures. Some men are masters of cities, but are enslaved to women. -
Attributed to Democritus:
“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold; happiness dwells in the soul.”
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Attributed to Democritus:
“He who joyfully does not many things in private and in public is at peace.”
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Attributed to Democritus:
“The best way to bring up children is by gentleness and persuasion, not by anger and threats.”
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“Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.”
Freeman (1948) [ 1 ] , p. 161 | Variant: The good things of life are produced by learning with hard work; the bad are reaped of their own accord, without hard work. [ citation needed ] -
Attributed to Democritus:
“It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.”