Famous Epicurus Quotes Explained
Epicurus was a Greek Hellenistic philosopher who founded the school known as the Garden in Athens around 307 BC. Most of Epicurus's writings are lost; what survives reaches us through Diogenes Laërtius, Lucretius, and short letters and maxims. Below are eight of the most-circulated lines, with notes on his Garden's argument.
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.”
What it means
From the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus's compact summary of his ethics. The argument is that death cannot be experienced: while we exist, death is not present, and once death is present, we no longer exist. The fear of death is therefore a fear of nothing, and removing it removes one of the chief obstacles to a tranquil life.
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.”
What it means
From the Principal Doctrines, the collection of forty short maxims preserved by Diogenes Laërtius. For Epicurus, friendship is not merely useful but constitutive of the good life — the surest source of the long-term security and shared pleasure that he calls ataraxia. His school, the Garden, was structured around this thesis.
“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.”
Οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως, οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως. ὅτῳ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ ὑπάρχει ἐξ οὗ ζῆν φρονίμως, καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ὑπάρχει, οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτον ἡδέως ζῆν.
What it means
From the Letter to Menoeceus. Epicurus is rejecting the caricature of hedonism as indulgence: pleasure, for him, is the absence of physical pain and mental disturbance, which can only be sustained by prudence, justice, and virtue. The Stoics and Epicureans differed on what to aim at but agreed that wisdom and pleasure are inseparable.
Attributed to Epicurus:
“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
What it means
From the Vatican Sayings, a Greek manuscript of Epicurean aphorisms discovered in the Vatican Library in the nineteenth century. The line is a diagnostic of insatiability: a desire that cannot be limited is a desire that cannot be satisfied, and the route to contentment is reducing desire rather than expanding possession.
Attributed to Epicurus:
“If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, do not give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.”
What it means
From the Vatican Sayings. Pythocles was a young friend whom Epicurus addressed in several extant letters. The principle is the standard Epicurean position that wealth is a relation between desire and resources, and the cheaper route to wealth is shrinking the numerator.
Attributed to Epicurus:
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.”
What it means
From the Vatican Sayings. Epicurus argues that present goods are devalued by the imagination's habit of comparing them to absent ones; the corrective is to attend to what one has by recalling that it was once only hoped for. The technique anticipates Stoic exercises in negative visualisation.
Attributed to Epicurus:
“Empty is that philosopher's argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated.”
What it means
From the Vatican Sayings. Epicurus held that philosophy is medicine for the soul (therapeia): if it does not actually relieve suffering — fear, longing, disturbance — it has no business calling itself philosophy at all. The line is the slogan of his therapeutic conception of the discipline.
“Don't fear god , Don't worry about death ; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure. (tr. D. S. Hutchinson, 1994 ) The Tetrapharmakos , or "four-part cure", a summary of the first four Principal Doctrines . Composed by an unidentified Epicurean philosopher ( Usener 1887:69 ); reported by Philodemus , P.Herc. 1005, IV.10–14.”
ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος, καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον.
What it means
The tetrapharmakos or "fourfold remedy" preserved on a wall inscription at Oenoanda and in the manuscript of Philodemus. The four clauses summarise the Epicurean cure for human anxiety: no fear of gods, no fear of death, easily obtained goods, easily endured pains. Memorising them was the entry-point to the school.