Epicurus 341 BC – 270 BC
Epicurus was a Greek Hellenistic philosopher who founded the school known as the Garden in Athens around 307 BC. His ethics taught that pleasure, properly understood as the absence of pain in the body and disturbance in the soul, is the highest good and the natural goal of human life. His physics was atomistic, drawing on Democritus, and held that the gods exist but take no interest in human affairs. Most of his extensive writings are lost, but his ideas survive in three letters preserved by Diogenes Laertius, in the Principal Doctrines and Vatican Sayings, and in the Latin epic poem of his follower Lucretius. Epicureanism was a major Hellenistic school for centuries and was rediscovered as a serious philosophical option in the European Renaissance and early modern period.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Epicureanism, Hellenistic, Ancient Greek
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Epicurus:
“Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”
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Attributed to Epicurus:
“Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.”
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Attributed to Epicurus:
“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly.”
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Attributed to Epicurus:
“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
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Attributed to Epicurus:
“If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, do not give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.”