How to Be Truly Free: Lessons From a Philosopher President

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich . . . to study hard, to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is m

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Brunello: In everything, really. For example, take Marcus Aurelius, the emperor. In any possible mood that you might be in, you read a sentence by him and you feel better. Any philosopher helps you to raise your head and the world will look better. Respect the human being, and that will be better. Hadrian the emperor said, “I never met anyone who a... See more

This confrontation with limitation also reveals the truth that freedom, sometimes, is to be found not in achieving greater sovereignty over your own schedule but in allowing yourself to be constrained by the rhythms of community—participating in forms of social life where you don’t get to decide exactly what you do or when you do it. And it leads t

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The life appropriate to a human being—the life appropriate to a rational being—is not a luxury above the basic requirements of survival. It is the basic requirement of survival. On the individual level, the person who refuses to think, to act, to pursue values, either perishes outright or exists as a parasite on the efforts of persons more rational

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