Epicurus recommends bread and cheese as the staple, and his emphasis is more on avoiding pain than on seeking pleasure, insofar as pleasure-seeking tends to be followed by painful after-effects.

The Epicureans denied that the gods had created the world and also denied that they played any role in it.

The higher the coefficient of inequality (Gini coefficient) in a society, the worse things tend to be for those at the bottom.

I have to say that some philosophers such as the late Bernard Williams, and I would include myself in this group, would say that tranquillity is overrated as the goal of life.

We have to gamble, and sometimes lose as George Ainslie argues; this keeps the appetite for life sharp.

'Contract' succeeded 'status' as the basic organising principle in modern political vs. ancient society.

Atomism had no absolute 'above' and 'below' and no such rulers, so favoured the undersranding of justice as an agreement amongst equals.

Epicurus thought of justice as an agreement to prevent people harming and being harmed.

Epicurus was not at all interested in what we would call the problems of mass society, and he thought civic politics was just trouble and to be avoided by the wise.

Claims like 'Slavery is wrong' are not fully common-sensical, so they must be at least partly theoretical.

The (atomic) soul is mortal, and the best life is the one with the least pain and the most pleasure.

You don’t have to affirm the positive after you have released a negative belief!

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

If conservatives get to call universal healthcare 'socialized medicine,' I get to call private, for-profit healthcare 'soulless, vampire bastards making money off human pain.'

What spurs a person to get more serious is highly individual, but I have found that no matter what a person's level of ability, motivation must come from within, or it will not last.

Men always love what is good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong.

From your confessor, lawyer and doctor, hide not your case on no condition. [Is this a way of saying that honesty is the best policy?]

I don't think any other emotion is the equivalent of laughter. So I do whatever I can to laugh all the time and to hide my pain.

You can change your faith without changing gods, and vice versa.

These are optimistic pieces, travel pieces that go anywhere