# Progressive Summary This is a well-written guide on Stoic philosophy. The quotes are well chosen. # Structured Notes The most basic idea of Stoicism is that whether something is good or bad is, to a great extent, a matter of what our opinion about it is. And we have a lot of leeway in changing our opinions. The simplest example is when someone insults us. If we can alter our judgment about it, then the insult can do us no harm. But if we let ourselves be worked up over it, then we will feel the insult as if it were real. The Stoics use comparisons to demonstrate this in more difficult cases. Take physical pain. They tell stories of cultures where women bear the pain of childbirth as if it were nothing. They were "casual anthropologists", and used the variability of human cultural responses to show how much our judgments of things are a matter of culture, and therefore can be altered. Between an action and a reaction, they insert awareness of judgment, and urge us to spend our energy on altering our judgment, rather than on avoiding or getting things. With food, for instance, they point out that almost any food can taste good if we are hungry enough, so we should only eat when we are hungry. Through our choices, we can alter our appetite. # Rough Notes > Behold the beginning of philosophy! – perception of men’s  disagreement with one another, and a search for the origin  of the disagreement; rejection and distrust of mere opinion,  and inquiry to see whether an opinion is right or wrong; and  the discovery of some standard for judgment – just as to  deal with weights we discovered the balance, or for straight  and crooked things, the ruler. > – Epictetus, Discourses  2.11.13 > Epictetus’s description, taken broadly, can indeed be viewed as  an account of how Stoic philosophy came into being in general,  and also of how it might begin for anyone who studies it. We  see others talking or thinking or acting differently than we  would, or differently than we had imagined anyone might – the  disagreement to which Epictetus refers. This causes us to take  our contrary thoughts and customs less for granted, and to see  them as more dependent on choice and circumstance than we  had supposed (the rejection and distrust of mere opinion). We  are led to look harder at our own thinking, and to seek a more  true and accurate basis for it – the acquisition of the balance  and ruler. The result may not be our old opinion or the alter-  native that surprised us; it may be a perspective that accounts  for both and in some way elevates our understanding. The above could well serve as a description of NVC. # Quotes > Clothes seem to warm us, but not by throwing off heat  themselves; for in itself every garment is cold, which is why  people who are hot or have fevers frequently are constantly  changing clothes. Rather, the clothes that wrap us keep in  the heat that is thrown off by the body and don’t allow it to  be dissipated. A somewhat similar case is the idea that de-  ceives the mass of mankind – that if they could live in big  houses, and get together enough slaves and money, they  would have a happy life. But a happy and cheerful life does  not come from without. On the contrary, a man adds the  pleasure and gratification to the things that surround him,  his temperament being, as it were, the source of his feel-  ings.  Plutarch, On Virtue and Vice