📅 15 Apr 2025 • 📖 8 min read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
The internet is flooded with fake Marcus Aurelius quotes. People share them because these memes or picture quotes often say a few profound things, misattributing them to The Philosopher King.
Many never realize they are fake. Some of them even say things opposite to what Marcus Aurelius would have said.
Or, as Gregory Sadler points out, some of them “are at odds with” what Marcus wrote in the Meditations.
Fake Quotes of Marcus Aurelius: What He Never Said or Wrote
1. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
Extremely popular, but Marcus Aurelius did not say that. Something with “everything” is Meditations 2.15:
“Everything is what you suppose it to be. For the words that were addressed to the Cynic Monimus are clear enough, and clear too, the value of that saying, if one accepts its inner meaning, so far as it is true.”
However, the real lesson that the fake quote tries to give us is Meditations 4.7:
“Do away with the judgement, and the notion ‘I have been harmed’ is done away with; do away with that notion, and the harm itself is gone.”
And Meditations 8.47:
“If you suffer distress because of some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you but your judgement about it, and it is within your power to cancel that judgement at any moment.”
2. “Anger cannot be dishonest.”
Not his words. I’d say what comes close is this:
“Anger in the face is unnatural. † . . . † or in the end is put out for good, so that it can’t be rekindled. Try to conclude its unnaturalness from that. (If even the consciousness of acting badly has gone, why go on living?)” — Meditations, 7.24
3. “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
That ‘morning’ quote is very popular, but no, Marcus did not write it. Two real quotes that come close are:
Meditations, 8.12:
“When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic—what defines a human being—is to work with others. Even animals know how to sleep. And it’s the characteristic activity that’s the more natural one—more innate and more satisfying.”
Meditations, 5.1:
“’In the morning, when you find yourself loathe to rise, have this thought at hand: “I am arising to a man’s work. Shall I be annoyed at having to set about the work for which I was born, and for which I was brought into the world? Was I designed for the purpose of lying among the blankets and keeping myself warm?”‘”
4. “The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
Just no. The earliest attribution of this phrase to Marcus Aurelius comes from Leo Tolstoy’s 1904 book Bethink Yourselves, in which Tolstoy claims that it is from Meditations.
However, one of his ‘escape’ quotes is Meditations, 7.71:
“It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.”
5. “Each day provides its own gifts.”
No, he didn’t say that.
6. “What we do now echoes in eternity.”
Marcus could not have said, “What we do now echoes in eternity.” In fact, he talked more often about how past actions are forgotten quickly, within one or two generations.
His actual words in Meditations 4.3:
“But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands.”
And Meditations 4.6:
“Anyway, before very long you’ll both be dead—dead and soon forgotten.”
And Meditations 8.2:
“But soon I’ll be dead, and the slate’s empty.”
7. “Death smiles at us, but all a man can do is smile back.”
“Death smiles at us …” is not from Marcus at all. It’s a line from a popular movie that had Marcus Aurelius as a character, Gladiator. It was the movie’s hero, Maximus (played by Russell Crowe), who said it to Commodus.
Still, we can learn five Stoic lessons from “Death smiles at us …”.
8. “No man is happy who does not think himself so.”
He did not say that. What Marcus wrote was this, in Meditations, 2.8:
“But if you won’t keep track of what your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?”
Another translation of 2.8 is:
“Those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy”.
9. “A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.”
Marcus made no reference to “ambition” in his statement. He said in Meditations, 7.3,
“Surrounded as we are by all of this, we need to practice acceptance. Without disdain. But remembering that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.”
7.3 can also be read as, “Every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.”
10. “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”
No, again.
But you’d love this ‘thousand’ quote of his, Meditations, 2.14:
“Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?”
11. “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
That’s a fake quote. Something that comes close could be 2.8:
“Ignoring what goes on in other people’s souls—no one ever came to grief that way. But if you won’t keep track of what your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?”
Especially, if you reverse that, and interpret soul = mind:
Paying attention to what goes on in other people’s minds—many have come to grief that way. But if you keep track of what your own mind’s doing, how can you be anything but happy?
12. “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
13. “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but… will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
The misattributed quote seems to be a terrible paraphrase of Meditations 2.11:
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. If the gods exist, then to abandon human beings is not frightening; the gods would never subject you to harm. And if they don’t exist, or don’t care what happens to us, what would be the point of living in a world without gods or Providence?”
Meditations, 6.44 talks about gods:
If the gods have made decisions about me and the things that happen to me, then they were good decisions. (It’s hard to picture a god who makes bad ones.) And why would they expend their energies on causing me harm? What good would it do them—or the world, which is their primary concern?
And if they haven’t made decisions about me as an individual, they certainly have about the general welfare. And anything that follows from that is something I have to welcome and embrace.
And if they make no decisions, about anything—and it’s blasphemous even to think so (because if so, then let’s stop sacrificing, praying, swearing oaths, and doing all the other things we do, believing the whole time that the gods are right here with us)—if they decide nothing about our lives … well, I can still make decisions.
Final Words
If you judge someone because they misquote Marcus Aurelius, then for you is Meditations, 11.18:
“No, no, my friend. That isn’t what we’re here for. It isn’t me who’s harmed by that. It’s you.”
√ Also Read: Life & Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius: The Philosopher King
√ Please spread the word if you found this helpful.
