Just as medicine is useless if it does not drive out bodily disease, so philosophy is useless if it does not drive out suffering of the soul.
Pas ho tou philosophountos logos kenos, hyph' hou medemion pathos anthrouou therapeuetai. Hosper gar iatrikes ouk ophelos me tas nosous ton somaton ekballouses, houtos oude philosophias, ei me to tes psyches ekballei pathos.
Philosophers
Epicurus
Born on the island of Samos around 341 BCE, Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded the Garden school in Athens and declared pleasure the highest good. Yet his pleasure was not sensual indulgence but ataraxia — tranquility of mind achieved by eliminating pain and anxiety. Inheriting Democritus's atomism and introducing the 'swerve' of atoms to ground free will, he became a founding figure of Hellenistic practical philosophy.
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Epicurus's Other Quotes
Death is nothing to us; for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
Live unknown.
Bodily pain does not last without limit; intense pain is brief in duration.
The pleasant life is produced not by endless drinking and revelry but by sober reasoning.
Empty is the philosopher's argument that does not heal any human suffering.