Epictetus on Freedom

"Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control."

"Freedom is the name of virtue: Slavery, of vice.... None is a slave whose acts are free."

"For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free."

"What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others. You shun slavery—beware of enslaving others! If you can endure to do that, one would think you had been once upon a time a slave yourself. For Vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor Freedom with slavery. ."

"Ask me, if you choose, if a Cynic shall engage in the administration of a state. ...Ask you if a man shall come forward in the Athenian assembly and talk about revenues and supplies, when his business is to converse with all men, Athenians, Corinthians, and Romans alike, not about supplies, not about revenue, not yet peace and war, but about Happiness and Misery, Prosperity and Adversity, Slavery and Freedom? ...what greater government shall he hold than he holds already? ."

"Think you to be a philosopher while acting as you do? think you to go on thus eating, thus drinking, giving way in like manner to wrath and to displeasure? Nay you must watch, you must labor; overcome certain desires; quit your familiar friends, submit to be despised by your slave, to be held in derision by them that meet you, to take the lower place in all things, in office, in positions of authority, in courts of law. Weight these things fully, and then, if you will, lay to your hand; if as the price of these things you would gain Freedom, Tranquility, and passionless Serenity. ."