Tom Morris

At its best, philosophy is an activity to be pursued by every thoughtful person. It’s not an enterprise of purely esoteric speculation reserved for ancient minds with nothing better to do. It’s not a dusty museum of past masters. Philosophy is a vibrant quest to know, to understand, and finally, to act—with wisdom.

Enjoyment is not meant to be the final end state of a long and arduous process of attainment. It is meant to be woven through the tapestry of our lives *now.* In the present. And throughout the process along the way.

One thing we must do with any success we attain is to use it to launch ourselves onto the next quest for a new success. Whenever you attain your goals, you need new goals. Right away. Otherwise you risk the near certain ennui of literal aimlessness.

I see authentic personal success as always tied in with forms of caring. The moral calling of citizenship is a duty to care.

The more clearly we know what we want, the more obvious it will be what we should do.

Here’s the way I like to put it. It’s a 3D approach to life’s achievement: (1) Discover your talents. (2) Develop those talents. (3) Deploy your talents into the world for the good of others as well as yourself.

It’s not wrong to want resources. It’s not wrong to have as a goal the positive recognition and respect of other people. But money, fame, power, and social status should never be our primary focus.

The most consistently lucky people happen to be those who are most prepared.

In this life, we’re either getting better or we’re getting worse. If we’re not growing, we’re diminishing... The good should always give way to the better. Otherwise, it will at some point inevitably dissipate into the worse.

For the Stoics, virtue is not merely a good or even the highest good, but the only true good. It’s the be-all and end-all of human existence

Too many people seem to be chasing the wrong things. Getting equipped to go faster down the wrong road has never been a recipe for human happiness.

It’s my job as a patriotic citizen to figure out what I can do for the greater good, and then get busy doing it.

And here the main lessons are simple. The inner is more important than the outer. We’ll never get external things right until we first get internal things right. It can’t be reasonable to sacrifice inner goods to get outer results. No accumulation of external things, however massive, can justify abandoning virtue and embracing vice on any occasion and however temporary. Happiness happens within.

You can’t please everybody. Don’t even try. And don’t let it bother you.

Ultimately, every act of patriotism is an ongoing commitment to regular action for the common good from which we all benefit.

The ancients thought of happiness as primarily a state of being. Modern people tend to conceive of it as a state of feeling. Those who haven’t thought about it enough wrongly construe it as a state of having. It may instead be more like a process of becoming.

On the classic Stoic analysis, eudaimonia requires just one thing. One single item alone is both necessary and sufficient for happiness. And that is virtue. If you want the ultimate and all too elusive state of maximal flourishing or deep well-being in your life, arete will do the job. It will suffice.

A fantasy is a dream, a desire is an inclination, a goal is a commitment of the will... You never have a goal without a real commitment.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor, a CEO or a custodian—your primary job is always personal growth in virtue. You are here to bring the right attitudes and actions to the people around you and to the external world. But it is always the inner you that is your first workplace and most important task.

In a sense, as Epictetus would later famously say, ‘the philosopher’s school is a doctor’s office.’ Our souls are sick with false beliefs, out-of-control desires, unruly emotions, and unnecessary worry. Philosophy, which is the love and pursuit of wisdom and proper perspective, provides the cure.

Money alone will never satisfy—nor will power, fame, or status. The only wealth certain to fulfill us is inner wealth, a sort of health of the spirit, manifested in proper attitudes, emotions, and thoughts. And it is inner wealth that most easily flows over into the world in sustainable accomplishment.

There is no substitute for hard work.

Do you want to be happy? Be good. Embrace virtue. That’s the beginning and end of the story, according to our Stoic advisors

The happiest people in the world are people who love what they are doing, regardless of whether wealth, fame, power and elevated social status ever come their way. The most fulfilled people are individuals who delight in their work, whatever it might be, and strive to do it well.

But in the Stoic view, there is a pure simplicity beneath all this complexity: Virtue alone can guarantee happiness. So if you want to be happy, don’t seek that goal by chasing external things that can’t do the job, but rather by working on the inner virtue of your own soul. That is the only true and reliable path.

Who we are is always a matter of how we act. And what we become is the result of the activities we engage in day to day. The great philosopher Aristotle knew it, and so have many other insightful thinkers through the centuries, like Blaise Pacal, and William James. If we could keep this truth in mind throughout all our endeavors, we would be able to exercise a good deal more care in what we become.

Fear is the darkroom in which negatives are developed.

Remember, the smarter you are, the more you need positive self-talk to counter the naturally higher levels of anxiety highly intelligent people are prone to.

Too many people dream of the results of success and ignore the process.

Dreamers of big dreams have to learn to be doers of small deeds in order to position themselves to make their dreams come true.

“If we want the boldness to pursue new goals, we should not allow ourselves to dwell imaginatively too much on the possible risks of failure.”

Stoicism overall demands great emotional control, a commitment to the common good over personal gain, and a strong devotion to virtue above all other ends.

Many people think the key to success is hard work. And that is important. Very important. But it’s more important to work smart.

The success of inner achievement, personal excellence, and moral concern moving out into the world and making a positive difference can be our aim. And it should be. In the end, living a life geared toward true success is the only sensible way to live. It is the only way to have a thoroughly meaningful and completely fulfilling existence.

We should always have as our primary goals clear focal targets of creation, contribution, and participation in life to the fullest. The positive consequences of recognition that may result can be enjoyed immensely, but should always be secondary consequences.

“Problems are just life’s way of getting the best out of us.”

Philosophy, as a “love of wisdom,” must be, at its best, a love of living wisely, and a love of attaining wisdom about living by and through both the act of living and the practice of carefully reflecting on that lived experience.