5 More of the Most Stoic Moments in History

On today’s episode, Ryan discusses 5 of the most Stoic moments in history with examples from Agrippinus, Steve Scott, Kerri Strugg, Frederick Douglass, and Epictetus. Today’s episode is also brought to you by Thuma. Thuma has spent thousands of hours making the perfect platform bed frame, called The Bed. The Bed by Thuma is super supportive of your mattress, breathes well, and is built to naturally minimize noise. Thuma ships your bed frame right to your door, and it takes five minutes to assemble, no tools required. Visit Thuma.co/stoic to get free shipping on your order of The Bed today. ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Weekend episode of The Daily Stoic. A couple of months back, we did an episode on 10 awesome Stoic moments from history. It was really popular. People loved it. There is just so much we can learn, not just from the philosophers themselves, as fascinating as Epictetus and Marcus and Seneca are, but from people who maybe didn't even know what Stoicism was, but happened to be embodying it. And maybe not even across their whole lives, but just one moment. Look, that's a choice I've made in my books. And sometimes people get upset about this for, you know, God knows what reason. But people get upset because, you know, an obstacle is a way,

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  let's say, I'm talking about John D. Rockefeller. And they go, "John D. Rockefeller is not Stoic." I'm not saying he is a Stoic philosopher. I'm not even saying he's a good person. But I'm saying in this moment, in this part of his life, he embodied an important idea in Stoicism. For the same way that you see Alexander the Great come up positively in Seneca in some cases, but then negatively in Marcus Aurelius. And maybe Epictetus had a third opinion, right? The Stoics knew that stories were powerful. They knew that examples and anecdotes were powerful. That's what I try to do in my writing. That's what I try to do here on this show. So today, we've got five more.

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  Amazing, inspiring, in some cases, almost superhuman examples of Stoicism, of overcoming adversity, of acting with goodness and decency and self-control. I think each one of these stories embodies those four virtues in one way or another: courage, justice, temperance, wisdom. Some of the examples you're going to hear from are literally Stoics. Again, sometimes they're just athletes who were being Stoic in a moment. But I think you'll like this episode. And if you want some more examples like this that are outside my books, listen to our other episode, 10 of the most inspiring Stoic moments in history. You can also check out today's episode and the other one I'm talking about

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  on YouTube at youtube.com/dailystoic.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus once calmly warned him about taking his abuses too far. He was bending Epictetus's leg, back, back. And when the leg snapped, Epictetus made no sound. He cried no tears. He only smiled and looked his master in the eye and said, "Didn't I warn you?"

• 3:24Ryan Holiday?

  "Philosophy isn't something you explain," the first-century Stoic Epictetus once said. "It's something you embody." So when we ask this question, "What is Stoicism?", perhaps the best way to answer is by illustration. We don't care what someone wrote about Stoicism. We don't necessarily even care if they identified as Stoic. What matters is whether they lived by the ideas. People who exercise the virtues of Stoicism, courage, justice, wisdom, and self-discipline in their actions, that's what Epictetus was talking about. Because there's nothing more inspiring or motivating than seeing greatness embodied.

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  So let's look at five of the greatest, most inspiring moments of Stoicism in the real world in history, some ancient, some modern, some minor, some major. But these are real philosophical actions. Even if we don't see the person as a philosopher, they are, as Marcus Aurelius said, "not someone talking about what a good man is like, but actually being one." Steve Scott. Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, North Plains, Oregon, 1996. The golf world's anointed one, Tiger Woods headed into the U.S. Amateur Championships having won 30 straight matches.

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  With a win at Pumpkin, Tiger would become the first golfer to ever win three straight U.S. Amateur titles. The first five rounds of match play were uneventful. Woods advanced to the finals where his opponent was a relatively unknown 19-year-old named Steve Scott. After the first 18 of a 36-hole final, no one could believe it. Scott led by five holes. The final 18 holes were a battle. Tiger cut Scott's lead to one in the back nine. On the par-three 10th hole, Scott drained a flop shot from the deep rough to stretch his lead back to two. Then Tiger sank a legendary 35-foot putt for eagle to move within one. On 16, down two with three holes to play, Tiger hit his wedge shot within six feet of the pin.

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  He placed a quarter to mark his ball before picking it up, and the marker was in Scott's putting line, so he asked Tiger to slide it over, which he did. Scott made his putt to par. Forgetting that he moved his marker, Tiger put his ball down and was about to putt from the wrong spot. If he did, he'd automatically lose the hole in the tournament. And just before Tiger could make this fatal mistake, Scott intervened. "Hey Tiger, did you move that back?" Tiger paused, returned his marker then his ball to the correct spot, and made the putt. He birdied 17 to force a sudden-death playoff. On the second playoff hole, Scott's putt lipped out, and Tiger tapped his in for the victory and a place in history.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  It would be Scott's one and only moment in the spotlight. He hoped to have a career on the PGA Tour, but it didn't quite pan out. Had he destroyed his own career? Had he committed professional golf suicide? In 1999, he married his girlfriend, his caddy, during that epic battle against Woods. In an interview for a piece commemorating the 20-year anniversary of that famous match, Scott would say, "We've gone on to have a great life." I think I'm walking proof that you can win in life without winning. The Stoics would say that to cheat was not to win. The Stoics would say to let someone do harm to themselves when you could prevent it was no glorious act. Runners in a race ought to compete and strive to win as they can.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoic Chrysippus said, but by no means should they trip their competitors or give them a shove. So too in life it is wrong to seek after the things useful in life. But to do so while depriving someone else is not just. And this was the truly impressive thing about Scott's victory. He wanted to win only under the right terms and he was willing to lose and would never violate his conscience.

• 7:30Ryan Holiday?

  Agrippinus. The little known Stoic philosopher Agrippinus had a penchant for brilliant one liners. There was the time he'd been informed and responded, very well, we shall take our lunch on the road. There was another time we are told by Epictetus that Agrippinus was asked by a fellow philosopher whether or not he should attend a banquet put on by the abominable Nero. Agrippinus told the man that yes, he should go. But why the man asked? And that's when Agrippinus got him with another one of his brilliant barbs. Because you were even thinking about it. For me, Agrippinus said, it's not even a question and that's why I'm not going. To Agrippinus, it was inexcusable to hem and haw about the right thing.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  There was no weighing of options like with Steve Scott, there was only one option. He who once sets himself about such consideration, Epictetus said about Agrippinus, and goes to calculating the worth of external things approaches very near to those who forget their own character. Character is fate, is how Herakles, one of the Stoics' favorite influences put it. And that was what Agrippinus lived by. He believed that only character decided difficult matters and it did so clearly and easily. No calculating, no consideration was necessary. The right thing was obvious, even when it cost him his life.

• 8:52Ryan Holiday?

  Keri Strug. Before the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Keri Strug was known as the gymnast who had all the talent in the world but crumbled when it mattered most. “I wasn’t mentally tough,” she said, “that’s how I was portrayed, and the media was right. I would always falter when all eyes were on me.” As a member of the U.S. women’s team nicknamed “The Magnificent Seven,” Strug had the eyes of an entire nation on her and her teammates. This was America’s shot to win gold. The fourth and final event was the vault. The U.S. had a slight lead over the Russians, but they were starting to fall apart. The first four Americans had sloppy landings. One of her teammates fell and put even more pressure on Strug. She was the last U.S. gymnast.

• 9:36Ryan Holiday?

  She had to land one of her two vaults on her feet to clinch gold. On her first attempt, she under-rotated, fell, and tore two ligaments in her ankle. “Was it happening again? Was this another moment too big? Keri, we need you to go one more time,” her coach told her. “We need you one more time for the gold. You can do it. You have to do it.” She set up her second attempt, sprinted down the runway, flew through the air, and stuck the landing on one foot. She saluted the grudges, and then she collapsed. Grimacing in pain, she crawled off the mat before two coaches picked her up and carried her off the floor. She was in their arms when her score was announced: 9.712.

• 10:18Ryan Holiday?

  She clinched the U.S.'s first-ever team gold medal on one foot. “You can break my leg,” Epictetus said, “but not even God can conquer my will. That’s what determination allows us to do.” Frederick Douglass. It was the 1840s. Only a couple years after Frederick Douglass had escaped the slave state he was born into and bade farewell to that slavery which had been my childhood. The young man, still in his early twenties, was on a mission. He had toured all over the United States. He attended abolitionist meetings. He told the story of his escape from bondage. He lectured at churches and chapels and universities and small-town centers in any Where there was a chance people might congregate.

• 11:03Ryan Holiday?

  Traveling somewhere in Pennsylvania, Douglas was forced to move and ride in a baggage car because of his race. A white supporter rushed to apologize for this horrible offense. "I'm sorry, Mr. Douglas, they said that you have been degraded in this manner." But Douglas wouldn't accept this. "No, he wasn't angry, he wasn't hurt," he replied with great firmness. "They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me, no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are afflicting it upon me." The ancient Stoics, because of their independent thinking, their positions of leadership, their willingness to stand on principle, were often the subjects of verbal and physical mistreatment.

• 11:46Ryan Holiday?

  But it was Epictetus, that slave-turned-Stoic teacher, that said that a person can only degrade you with your consent. "It is not enough to be insulted or harmed," he said, "you must believe that you are being harmed if someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation." And that's what Douglas did. He was stronger, he was better, he transcended the prejudices and ignorance of his time, and he became a truly great man because of it. Epictetus, we've been talking about him now over and over again, and there's a reason why. There were philosophers who talked about how to be resilient, and then there was Epictetus,

• 12:30Ryan Holiday?

  the acquired one, that's how his name translates. He was born the son of a slave woman and spent the first thirty years of his life in chains. As a young boy, he was purchased by an officer in Nero's Imperial Guard who was violent and depraved. Epictetus once calmly warned him about taking his abuses too far. He was bending Epictetus's leg, back, back, and when the leg snapped, Epictetus made no sound, he cried no tears. He only smiled and looked his master in the eye and said, "Didn't I warn you?" All his life, Epictetus walked with a limp from this injury. He was hobbled by slavery and yet somehow unbroken all the same. Lamentous is an "Compediment to the leg," he would later say, "but not to the will."

• 13:14Ryan Holiday?

  And nothing indeed stopped Epictetus's will. Soon enough, he was free and he would go on to become one of the greatest philosophers, an advisor to emperors and princes, a man whose philosophy stands true and widely read today. The Stoics believed that we decide how we react to what happens to us. Epictetus said, "We have the power to choose, to see our disabilities, our disadvantages, as only physical, never mental." "No human is the full author of what happens to us in life," he would say. Instead, it is as if we are in a play and the playwright has some power over us. Whatever role we end up getting, we have to decide to use to make the most of.

• 13:56Ryan Holiday?

  "This is your business," he said, "to act well the character assigned to you." And it cannot be said that Epictetus didn't play his role gloriously, and that is why we are talking about him today and why he may well be the greatest Stoic who ever lived. Unlike the pen and ink philosophers as the type was derisively known even 2,000 years ago, the Stoics were concerned not with what you said, not with what you wrote, not with what you believed, but with how you lived. The choices you made, the causes you served, the principles you adhered to in the face of adversity. They cared about what you did, not what you said. They cared about who you were as a person, not anything else.

• 14:40Ryan Holiday?

  So go and do as the Stoics have done throughout history. Do the right thing, be strong in the face of adversity, prove your ideals, turn your words into deeds, show the actions of a philosopher today, tomorrow, always.

• 14:57Ryan Holiday?

  If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.