Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Nothing is properly one's duty but what is also one's interest.

I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men.

We need to have a purpose in this life. I'm pleading with you, I'm begging with you to do the right thing. And do it not for the sake of how it will impact your own lives, but only for the sake of doing the right thing.

One often has need of one, inferior to himself.

Freedom isn't to do what you want at somebody else's expense.

The success of each of us benefits us all, and the success of us all benefits each of us individually.

Nature does nothing in vain.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers yet as one hand in all things essential to mutual progress..

What is not good for everyone is not good for anyone.

The only possible alternative to being either the oppressed or the oppressor is voluntary cooperation for the greatest good of all.

No longer need capitalist and worker, farmer and clerk, city and countryside, struggle to divide our bounty. By working shoulder to shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of all.

Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

You cannot just exercise your rights and get away without performing your responsibilities. Understand that it should not be about 'me' but rather 'us.'

We want to create a society that is working for us and with us - and we're working for society, not against it.

The values that East Asian culture upholds, such as the primacy of group interests over individual interests, support the total group effort necessary to develop rapidly.

I don't necessarily know about the rankings. I always like to look at it as, it's the person with the belt, and it's everybody else.

Integration is a give and take.

At Manchester, everyone plays for himself and does what he wants but it works out in the end.

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

The central law of all wholesome life is reciprocity, mutuality. ... But the group is valuable only as it permits personalities, not automatons, to emerge.

Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What's surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, "I have a purpose," and the other goods as well.

In protecting oneself, others are protected; In protecting others, oneself is protected.

Men are born for each other's sake, so either teach people or endure them

Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.

I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.