Unbiased Thought; 10 Stoic Quotes To Aid You In Objectivity
Discover, through the great stoics, how you can live a life with unbiased thought!
Heavily based on Ryan Holiday’s bestseller, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living.
The focus for the month of April was unbiased thought.
What Is Unbiased Thought? 💭
Unbiased thought is exactly that: thought without any bias, preconceptions or judgements.
In other words, it is objective thought.
Unbiased thought is seeing things as they are. It is not adding emotions or judgements, but it is simply observing.
Unbiased thought is key to the stoics, for it enables them to be objective, clear and rational in all aspects of life.
I. The Colour Of Your Thoughts
“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.16
II. Trust, But Verify
“First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from — let me put you to the test’ . . .”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.24
III. Test Your Impressions
“From the very beginning, make it your practice to say to every harsh impression, ‘you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be.’ Next, examine and test it by the rules you possess, the first and greatest of which is this — whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control, and if the latter, be prepared to respond, ‘It is nothing to me.’”
— EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 1.5
IV. Judegements Cause Disturbance
“It isn’t events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them.”
— EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 5
V. If You Want To Learn, Be Humble
“Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.17.1
VI. No Harm, No Foul
“Do away with the opinion I am harmed, and the harm is cast away too. Do away with being harmed, and harm disappears.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 4.7
VII. Don’t Let Your Attention Slide
“When you let your attention slide for a bit, don’t think you will get back a grip on it whenever you wish — instead, bear in mind that because of today’s mistake everything that follows will be necessarily worse. . . . Is it possible to be free from error? Not by any means, but it is possible to be a person always stretching to avoid error. For we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide.”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.12.1; 19
VIII. There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Wrong
“If anyone can prove and show to me that I think and act in error, I will gladly change it — for I seek the truth, by which no one has ever been harmed. The one who is harmed is the one who abides in deceit and ignorance.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.21
IX. Prepare Yourself For Negativity
“When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me . . . and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness — nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 2.1
X. Want Makes You A Servant
“Tantalus: The highest power is —
Thyestes: No power, if you desire nothing.”
— SENECA, THYESTES, 440
