Epicurus on security and pleasure

“Any means by which it is possible to procure freedom from fearing other people is a natural good.

Some people have desired to gain reputation and to be well regarded, thinking in this way to gain protection from others. If the lives of such people are secure, they have acquired a natural blessing; but if they are not, they do not possess what they originally reached for by natural instinct.

No pleasure is bad in itself. But the things that make for pleasure in certain cases entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.”

(Leading Doctrines, 6, 7, and 8)

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