The Golden Sayings of Epictetus is a collection of almost 300 aphorisms culled from his Discourses and the Enchiridion. There are no known written works by Epictetus. His discourses were transcribed by his pupil Arrian, who wrote them down from memory after lessons “to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech.” The compilation of discourses ran to eight books, of which four have survived. The Enchiridion is a handbook or digest of the contents of the Discourses. One should think of the Golden Sayings as a further distillation of the Discourses.

Epictetus was a philosopher in the Stoic school. He made a core distinction between things within our power and things over which we have no power. He held that the basis of philosophy is self-knowledge, and that the only things within our power or those we generate from within – impulses, opinions, desires and aversions, which he groups together as “opinions”. Everything else is out of our control and subject to fate. Good and evil rests in the power of choice. Reason alone is good; one should understand not only what to do, but why. Application of reason in the choice of action over things within our power is the path to finding peace of mind in all things.

The philosophy of Epictetus as embodied in the Golden Sayings has been an influence on and inspiration to leaders in all walks of life, from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to James Joyce, J.D. Salinger, Tom Wolfe and David Mamet in more modern times.