katydee comments on Rationality Quotes January 2014 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Mestroyer 04 January 2014 07:39PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (186)
Tags: quotes

Comments (186)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: katydee 09 January 2014 12:39:27PM *  4 points [-]

If you can discover in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, and courage... if, I say, you can see anything better than this, then turn to it with all your heart and profit from this supreme good which you have discovered.

But if nothing better is revealed... if you find all else to be trivial and cheap when compared to this, then grant no place to anything else which, if once you turn to it and turn aside from your path, you would no longer be able without distraction to pay the highest honor to the good that is proper to you and truly your own.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book III)

Comment author: [deleted] 18 January 2014 01:28:53PM -1 points [-]

What silliness! Sounds like a stuck-up man who never had any actual fun.

Yes, I'm well aware of who he was. But it seems to me that aside from truth and perhaps temperance, justice and courage are of very little applicability and in fact are mainly concerned with getting one through wartime successfully. It often amazes me how many "greats" of history seem to have been so very concerned with winning the war that, right up until World War II, almost no effort was devoted to winning the peace.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit