Ruth Bader Ginsburg was given a little piece of advice on her wedding day by her mother in law: “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” Ginsburg would say she applied it to her job too: “I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court. When a thoughtless […]
Stoicism tells us that negative moments in our lives are teachers: We can learn how to be decent when we are treated indecently; the obstacle to getting something becomes the way to get that thing. Everything that happens to us—good, bad, ugly—becomes an opportunity to improve. Recently, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John […]
“Existentialism, I think, incorporates a lot of the same ideas as Stoicism, but it sort of fails rhetorically for a lot of people in a way that Stoicism doesn’t. It seems like it is very popular today among young, educated people to naively accept some form of Existentialism, or at least some stripped down interpretation […]
The Roman poet and satirist Juvenal was not exactly a Stoic. He was often bitter and mean and jealous. He would tease the Stoics too, joking once that the only difference between a Stoic like Marcus Aureliusand a Cynic like Diogenes (who was famously and deliberately impoverished) was that one wore a shirt and the other […]
Stefan Zweig was at one point one of the most popular novelists in the world. He wrote beautiful books and was celebrated across Europe…until the rise of Nazi Germany chased him from his home and family. He met fame and disaster with equal Stoic equanimity and strength. At the end of his life, he fell in […]
If you’re someone who wants to have an impact in this world, you need to have a platform. You need to have an audience to speak to and spread your message. What’s the best way to do this? It’s not by obsessively checking Twitter and Facebook—it’s by being of value and exemplifying the principles of […]
The American philosopher Brand Blanshard would write this wonderful passage about Marcus Aurelius and in it so eloquently captures why we study him and his Meditations here at DailyStoic.com: “Few care now about the marches and counter marches of the Roman commanders. What the centuries have clung to is a notebook of thoughts by a man whose real life was largely unknown […]
Today is the birthday of a former American president that some people like and some people don’t. There is no reason to get into politics here. But it is undeniable that Barack Obama’s time in office was defined by his strength of temperament and emotional discipline. Love him or hate him, you can’t say that […]
When we interviewed Professor Nancy Sherman, she told us a wonderful story about a conversation she had with the Stoic war hero Admiral James Stockdale. The message of the story is twofold, one, a reminder that Stoicism is not some evangelical religion and two, a general reminder to live and let live. Stockdale, you know, was […]