Stoic Meditations

Those who say that regard should be had for the rights of fellow-citizens, but not of foreigners, would destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind.

Injustice is fatal to social life and fellowship between people. For, if we are so disposed that each, to gain some personal profit, will defraud or injure his neighbor, then the bonds of human society must of necessity be broken.

If your friend were a tyrant, would you kill him? That is the situation that Brutus faced with respect to Caesar, and which Cicero analyzes in this episode.

There were, broadly speaking, two major clusters of Hellenistic philosophies: the Socratic ones and, for lack of a better term, the ataraxic ones. Let's take a look at the differences.

Whether moral goodness is the only good, as the Stoics believe, or whether, as the Peripatetics think, it is the highest of many goods, it is beyond question that expediency can never conflict with moral rectitude.

But the chief thing in all public administration and public service is to avoid even the slightest suspicion of self-seeking. For to exploit the state for selfish profit is not only immoral; it is criminal, infamous.

We must apologize also, to the best of our ability, if we have involuntarily hurt anyone’s feelings, and we must by future services and kind offices atone for the apparent offense.

Relieving the poor is a form of charity that is a service to the state as well as to the individual.

The reason for making constitutional laws was the same as that for making kings. For what people have always sought is equality of rights before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights.

Think of the aqueducts, canals, irrigation works, breakwaters, artificial harbors; how should we have these without the work of people?