- Lived:
- 341–270 BCE · born on Samos; taught in Athens
- Tradition:
- Hellenistic Greek; founder of Epicureanism, philosophy as therapy for fear
- The Big Idea:
- Pleasure is the goal of life — but pleasure, properly understood, means the absence of pain in the body and of turmoil in the soul, and it is astonishingly cheap to get.
- In their words:
- "Send me a little pot of cheese, that, when I like, I may fare sumptuously."
- If you remember one thing:
- The philosopher whose name became a byword for gourmet excess lived on bread and water, taught that happiness needs almost nothing, and spent his life curing people of the fear of gods and the fear of death.