Epictetus, a Roman Stoic philosopher who was born enslaved and taught in public lecture halls after gaining his freedom, built his entire teaching on one sorting rule: some things depend on us and most things do not. This collection of quotes about Epictetus and what we control gathers twelve of his most useful lines, gives the source for each one, and shows how the idea works in ordinary life.
Why does this matter now, especially in 2026? Because almost all of the stress people carry comes from trying to run the second bucket. You cannot control the economy, your ex, or the weather. You can control what you think about them, what you do next, and what you keep chasing.
Of all existing things some are in our power, others are not. It is up to us to do the former and not to touch the latter.
— Epictetus, Enchiridion 1
The philosopher himself never wrote these down. His student Arrian of Nicomedia recorded the Discourses, and a later editor gathered the Enchiridion, a handbook Epictetus is said to have handed to new students. That matters for accuracy: plenty of lines floating around online under Epictetus’s name are modern paraphrase, not verbatim text, and this list says which is which.
Table of Contents
- 1Quotes About Epictetus and What We Control at a Glance
- 21. “Of all existing things some are in our power, others are not”
- 3What Is the Dichotomy of Control in Epictetus?
- 42. “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things”
- 53. “If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it”
- 64. “When you are offended, know that it is your own opinion which has offended you”
- 75. “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do”
- 86. “We ought to be content with whatever happens, and take it as a task assigned to us”
- 97. “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens”
- 108. “It is impossible for a person to learn what they think they already know”
- 119. “No person is free who is not master of themselves”
- 1210. “The impediment to action advances action”
- 1311. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed”
- 1412. “The art of living is not to control what happens, but to master the judgments about what happens”
- 15Frequently Asked Questions
- 16What did Epictetus mean by things being in our control?
- 17How does the Stoic dichotomy of control work?
- 18Does accepting what we cannot control mean doing nothing?
- 19How can the dichotomy of control help with emotions and stress?
- 20Are internet versions of Epictetus quotes always accurate?
- 21Conclusion
Quotes About Epictetus and What We Control at a Glance
Read the table first if you only want the short version. Wording shifts between translations, so treat each line as a reliable summary of the passage rather than a fixed English original.
| Quote | Central idea about control | Where it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Of all existing things some are in our power, others are not | Sort every situation into two buckets before reacting | Any stressor; the first move every time |
| Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things | Interpretation adds the pain, not the event alone | Delays, cancellations, bad news |
| If you are pained by any external thing, it is your own judgment about it | Separate the event from the story attached to it | An unanswered message, a silent friend |
| When you are offended, it is your own opinion which has offended you | Offense requires your assent to the accusation | Public criticism, social media pile-ons |
| First say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do | Identity becomes a plan, not a wish | Starting a difficult habit or conversation |
| Take whatever happens as a task assigned to us | Acceptance is active, not passive | Equipment failure the night before a talk |
| Make the best use of what is in your power, take the rest as it happens | Effort goes into the part that responds to effort | Budget shortfalls, career changes |
| It is impossible to learn what you think you already know | Certainty is the thing you can least afford | Arguing politics with people you disagree with |
| No person is free who is not master of themselves | Freedom means governing reactions, not others | The urge-to-react urge at work |
| The impediment to action advances action | Obstacles can redirect a plan instead of ending it | A project that lost budget or staff |
| Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed | A felt injury still needs boundaries behind it | Handling repeated disrespect at work |
| The art of living is to master the judgments about what happens | Judgment is the workable layer in every event | A weekly review of what actually went wrong |
Four of these come from the Enchiridion, several from the Discourses, and the last three are modern renderings that circulate widely but do not map cleanly to a located passage. I have flagged each one in its own section.
1. “Of all existing things some are in our power, others are not”
Of all existing things some are in our power, others are not. It is up to us to do the former and not to touch the latter.
— Enchiridion 1, the opening passage of the handbook
For Epictetus, “in our power” meant a narrow and specific list: our judgment, our impulse, our desire, our aversion, and the assent we give to impressions as they arrive. Everything else, including body, property, reputation, office, and other human beings, sat in the other bucket.
Worked example: your manager criticizes a report in front of the team. The criticism is not up to you. You never control that person’s opinion, and no amount of worrying will change it. Your response, the standard of work you decide to hit tomorrow, and whether you ask a clarifying question are all up to you.
What Is the Dichotomy of Control in Epictetus?
The dichotomy of control is simply this two-bucket split. The up-to-us bucket holds intention, judgment, choice, and action — the things that change when you change them. The not-up-to-us bucket holds outcomes, other people, time, money that has already been spent, and the past.
The useful part is not the labelling. It is what the split tells you to do with your effort. In the first bucket, effort pays a return. In the second, effort spent demanding a different result is wasted, and the frustration that comes with it is self-inflicted.
One caution that longtime readers raise: the line between the buckets is tighter than people expect. You influence your employer, but you do not control your employer’s decision. Treat influence as a third category rather than pretending it sits inside control.
2. “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things”
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.
— Enchiridion 5
Consider a train delayed three hours. The delay is real, and it ruins part of your day. What adds the extra layer of dread is the story you attach to it: this trip is cursed, the whole week is going to go like this, I always pick bad trains.
Epictetus is not claiming the delay is pleasant. He is pointing at the difference between the event and the verdict you pass on it. The missed appointment, the cancelled flight, the meeting that ran over — none of those are optional. Your reading of them is.
That is also why this line shows up constantly in conversations about layoffs. On r/Stoicism, people say this is the version that hit hardest when a role disappeared, because the job was an external and the interpretation of it was the only thing left to work with.
3. “If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it”
If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.
— Enchiridion 5, same chapter, extended argument
This one gets at the mechanism rather than the slogan. Something happens. Then you add an assessment to it. The assessment is where the pain is generated, and unlike the event, the assessment can be revised.
Take an unread message from someone close to you. They wrote nine hours ago and have not replied. Three stories are available to you: they are busy, they are ignoring me, this confirms what I suspected about them. Only one of those is a fact, and you probably will not know which for hours.
The practical move is to write the bare facts down before you write your conclusion. Message unread, nine hours, three prior unanswered messages this week. Then ask what the story added. It usually adds less certainty than it feels like it does.
4. “When you are offended, know that it is your own opinion which has offended you”
If you are offended, know that it is your own opinion which has offended you.
— Enchiridion 33
Nobody hands you an insult. Someone does something, you assign it a meaning, and that meaning registers as an injury. Epictetus locates the offense inside the assignment, which is uncomfortable because it sounds like the other person’s behavior is unreal.
It is not. Someone can absolutely be cruel, and Epictetus would not tell you to stay in the room with them. The distinction is between a felt injury, which requires your assent, and a chosen response, which is still yours to make. Boundaries, honesty, and leaving are all chosen responses.
The classic case is public criticism. Your work is posted in a group chat and torn apart. Before you fire back a reply, notice what the insult landed on — a professional identity you were holding rather than a claim anyone can actually prove. Pause there and the reply usually writes itself, and it usually does not need to be defensive.
5. “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do”
First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.
— Discourses, Book 2
Epictetus treats character as a project you can work on, because actions are in your power and reputation is not. You cannot become known as a fair person by reputation alone. You become one by what you do when a deadline is inconvenient.
So name the quality, then name one behavior that expresses it today. Calm means answering the difficult email before replying to the easy ones. Honesty means flagging the delay on the project this afternoon instead of Friday. Courage means saying no to the extra shift.
Pick a single verb. A vague goal like being calmer gives you nothing to do tomorrow morning; a named behavior does.
6. “We ought to be content with whatever happens, and take it as a task assigned to us”
We ought to be content with whatever happens, and to take it as a task assigned to us.
— Discourses, Book 1
The word doing the work here is task. Acceptance in Stoicism is not putting your hands in your lap. It is receiving an assignment and starting on it, which requires you to look at what the situation now demands.
Say the projector dies twenty minutes before your presentation. Grieving the projector is not a task. Refocusing the audience with a story, moving the talk earlier, or printing the key slides as a handout — that is the task. Acceptance is the step that makes the next move obvious.
Readers who meet this idea and shrug usually expect acceptance to mean nothing changes. Nothing changes about the projector. Everything changes about what you do next.
7. “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens”
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
— Discourses, Book 1
This line compresses the whole teaching into two verbs, one for each bucket. Improve what responds to effort. Release your grip on what does not.
A household example: money. Your income, your bank’s decision, and the market next month are not up to you. What is up to you is which subscriptions you cancel, what you sell, whether you call the landlord, and how much you let a bad month define the year.
The error people make is spending all their attention on the wrong verb. Hours of research into what the market might do, almost none into the spending they can actually change. Split your effort the way the sentence splits it.
8. “It is impossible for a person to learn what they think they already know”
It is impossible for a person to learn what they think they already know.
— Discourses 2.4
Certainty is not a virtue in this scheme, because a settled conclusion closes the door on new evidence. Questions stay open. Epictetus pushes hard on this: the person who assumes they have finished learning has stopped at the one thing the discipline asks them to keep doing.
Try it in a political conversation at a family dinner. You probably will not change anyone’s mind, and the outcome was never yours. What is yours is whether you can ask one genuine question instead of four prepared statements, and whether you would notice evidence that contradicted you.
That is a controllable thing, and it is worth considerably more than winning the argument.
9. “No person is free who is not master of themselves”
No person is free who is not master of themselves.
— Discourses 4.1
Freedom here means mastery of your own reactions, habits, and judgments, not influence over anybody else. The word that trips people up is self, because it sounds like a retreat into selfishness. It is the opposite. Someone who cannot govern their own impulses has to obey whoever happens to supply the next one.
A simple exercise: when you feel the urge to react, delay the reaction by a set amount instead of refusing it outright. Ten minutes before answering the angry email. One full breath before replying in the argument at work. Do this a few times and the delay itself starts to feel available rather than impossible.
What you are training is the gap between impulse and action, which Epictetus treats as the one piece of territory that never gets confiscated.
10. “The impediment to action advances action”
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
— Modern rendering, not a securely located Epictetus passage
This line is popular and widely attributed to Epictetus, but the famous sentence comes from a later obstacle-focused tradition, and the second half of it is a modern addition. Treat it as a useful idea with a shaky pedigree rather than a quotation you can cite in a paper.
The underlying Stoic claim is sound, though. A project that loses half its budget still has a smaller version. A presentation that cannot use video can use a whiteboard. The obstacle is a change in the conditions, which lands in the not-up-to-us bucket, and choosing the next workable route lands squarely in the one you do control.
Where people get it wrong is skipping the planning stage and declaring any obstacle a gift. Sometimes the route genuinely leads somewhere better; sometimes you simply need a different plan and to say so out loud.
11. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed”
Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed.
— Modern rendering of the argument in Discourses 2.18, itself a paraphrase rather than a fixed translation
Read this carefully, because it is the line most often turned into bad advice. It is not a promise that nobody can hurt you, offend you, or damage you. It is a description of the assent step: harm registers as a verdict you pass, and a verdict can be withheld.
Three layers stay distinct. The felt injury is the first. The chosen response is the second. The action that follows — the boundary, the report, the exit — is the third, and it is fully available to you. Forum readers push back hard when Stoic content leaves out the third layer and leaves people thinking tolerance is the whole teaching.
If you are being treated badly, the correct Stoic response includes leaving or escalating. Not doing that is not acceptance. It is avoidance dressed up as virtue.
12. “The art of living is not to control what happens, but to master the judgments about what happens”
The art of living is not to control what happens, but to master the judgments about what happens.
— Widely circulated modern paraphrase, not a located Epictetus passage
This sentence has no verifiable source. It reads well because it summarizes the doctrine neatly, and I have put it last for that reason: use it as a summary of the twelve lines above, not as a citation.
Here is a three-column exercise that turns the whole list into something you can run in ten minutes. Take one current situation that is bothering you.
- Controllable facts: what is objectively true right now, with no interpretation. Who said what, when, what the deadline is.
- Controllable responses: your judgment, your next action, your boundaries, what you say and what you stop saying.
- Uncontrollable outcomes: what they reply, what the market does, whether you recover, how anyone judges you.
Put your effort into column two and let column three go. Column one is what you refuse to argue with. If you did the sort honestly and column two is thin, that is useful information: you have described a situation with almost no room to act, and the honest move is to change something in column one rather than agonize over column three.
Run it once a week and it takes less time than you would spend deciding whether you are allowed to feel what you feel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Epictetus mean by things being in our control?
Epictetus meant a short list, not a vague positive attitude. Up to us were our judgments, desires, aversions, impulses, and the assent we give to impressions as they arrive. Not up to us were body, property, reputation, office, other people, and past events. His point was practical: effort spent on the second group never produces a return, while effort in the first group always does.
How does the Stoic dichotomy of control work?
You sort a situation into two buckets before you react to it. Anything in the up-to-us bucket you act on directly: your judgment, your choice, your next step. Anything in the not-up-to-us bucket you recognize as having only one remaining input, which is your own judgment about it, and you stop spending anxiety there. Practitioners treat influence as a third category, since you can often affect outcomes without controlling them.
Does accepting what we cannot control mean doing nothing?
No, and this is the most common misreading. In the Discourses, acceptance is described as taking what happens as a task assigned to us, which means looking at what the situation now requires and doing that. When a projector fails before a talk, you cannot fix the projector and you are not meant to try. You can rework the talk, change the room, or explain what changed. Acceptance is the step that makes the next action clear.
How can the dichotomy of control help with emotions and stress?
It changes where you look for relief. Much of the distress people carry comes from wanting an external to behave differently, and that effort returns nothing. Sorting the situation moves your attention to the layer that actually responds to input: your judgment, your wording, your next action. That does not remove difficult feelings, but it removes the wasted effort of negotiating with things you never controlled.
Are internet versions of Epictetus quotes always accurate?
No. Epictetus left no writings of his own. His student Arrian recorded the Discourses, and a later editor compiled the Enchiridion from those notes, so wording differs between translations. Many popular lines are modern paraphrase rather than a located passage, including the obstacle line and the popular version of Enchiridion 33 about reacting to what happens. Check the source work before citing a quote formally.
Conclusion
Pick the situation that is taking up the most room in your head this week and sort it into the three columns from quote twelve: the facts you can verify, the responses you actually own, and the outcomes you never had. Then do one thing from the middle column today, and let the third column go. That is the whole method, and it takes about ten minutes.
