The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in...

Cato warning the nation: But, by the immortal gods, I call upon you, who have always valued your houses, villas, statues, and paintings...

"When both the privileges and the disqualifications of class have been abolished and men have shattered the bonds which once held them immobile," marveled the French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville, "the idea of progress comes naturally into each man's mind; the desire to rise swells in every heart at once, and all men want to quit their former social position. Ambition becomes a universal feeling."

Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things under our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the things not under our control are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, an

"No man is free who is not master of himself."

For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.

But I can show you a free man, so that you will never again have to look for an example. Diogenes was free. How did that come? It was not because he was born of free parents, for he was not, but because he himself was free, because he had cast off all the handles of slavery, and there was no way in which a person could get close and lay hold of him to enslave him. Everything he had was easily loosed, everything was merely tied on. If you had laid hold of his property, he woul

Come, now, and let us review the points on which we have reached agreement. The unhampered man, who finds things ready to hand as he wants them, is free. But the man who can be hampered, or subjected to compulsion, or hindered, or thrown into something against his will, is a slave. And who is unhampered? The man who fixes his aim on nothing that is not his own. And what are the things which are not our own? All that are not under our control, either to have, or not to have, o

So also Diogenes says somewhere: “The one sure way to secure freedom is to die cheerfully”…

Epictetus describes the worldview of the slave philosopher Diogenes:

…and above all others because of God, who has made us for this end. Come, was there anybody that Diogenes did not love, a man who was so gentle and kind-hearted that he gladly took upon himself all those troubles and physical hardships for the sake of the common weal? But what was the manner of his loving? As became a servant of Zeus, caring for men indeed, but at the same time subject unto God. That is why for him alone the whole world, and no special place, was his fatherla

So also in the case of man, it is not his man, it is not his material substance that we should honour, his bits of flesh, but the principal things. What are these? The duties of citizenship, marriage, begetting children, reverence to God, care of parents, in a word, desire, avoidance, choice, refusal, the proper performance of each one of these acts, and that is, in accordance with our nature. And what is our nature? To act as free men, as noble, as self-respecting. Why, what