"Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship."
— Epicurus
Of All The Means Which Wisdom
Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.
About this quote
Principal Doctrine 27 is one of the most celebrated of Epicurus's forty principal doctrines, preserved by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Epicurus held that friendship (philia) was the greatest of the goods philosophy could secure, because it multiplies pleasure and halves pain. The Epicurean Garden in Athens was famous in antiquity for the warmth of its communal life — a community that unusually included women and enslaved people. Unlike the Stoics, who valued friendship as virtuous in itself, Epicurus grounded friendship in its contribution to individual happiness.
Source
Principal Doctrines, Doctrine 27
