Here’s What Not To Do | Make Honesty Your Only Policy

Though Cicero wrote histories that praised the ethics and virtues of the Stoics, his ego and his expensive tastes got in the way of actually practicing it day to day. Try to remember Cicero’s example. Learn more about the Catiline conspiracy in Lives of the Stoics and in Ryan's interview with Francis Ford Coppola | Apple Podcasts & Spotify. 📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour🎥 Watch Francis Ford Coppola’s interview on YouTube ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  Here's what not to do. Cicero was considered by some to be the greatest speaker that ever lived. He was so eloquent that Caesar, often the victim of the man's words and criticism, regarded Cicero's achievements to be greater than his own, once remarking that "it was nobler to extend the frontiers of the mind than it was the boundaries of the empire." It's an ironic compliment, considering that when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and civil war ensued in Rome, Cicero was unable to use these noble gifts to stop Caesar. In fact, just years removed from defending the Republic against the Catiline Conspiracy, which we talked about at length in our interview with Francis Ford Coppola, you should check that

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  out, and we talked about it a lot in Lives of the Stoics. Cicero was unable to summon an audience at this critical time because he had become odious to many, as Plutarch tells us. Though Cicero wrote histories that praised the ethics and the virtues of the Stoics, labeling them the only true philosophers, at some level, he just couldn't truly commit to the philosophy. He loved to talk about it. He was fascinated by it intellectually, but his ego and his expensive tastes got in the way of actually practicing it day to day. Following his shining moment in stopping the Catiline Conspiracy, Plutarch writes that "one couldn't attend a senate or a public meeting without having to listen to the endless

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  repetitions from Cicero about his own great deeds." He even wrote a letter the size of a book to Pompey on the subject of his own achievements. And whereas Cleianthe's and Marcus Aurelius rejected bequests offered to them, Cicero was known to worm his way into people's estates so that they might one day leave him money. If it so benefited him, Cicero would argue for and ally himself with both sides of the aisle, standing mostly for himself. Such was his reputation that when Brutus, who was married to Cato's daughter and a good friend of Cicero, plotted to assassinate Caesar, he left Cicero out of the loop. He was too untrustworthy and too nervous and too vain to tell about it. After Caesar's death, Cicero began to take credit for the deed,

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  claiming that Brutus had shouted his name as he plunged the dagger in, "to witness that he was now my rival in glory." Honestly, the more you read about Cicero, the harder it is to like him. "Character is fate," the Stoics said, "it determines our destiny." And Cicero was vain, he had a huge ego, he didn't always have a great moral compass. Ultimately, Cicero loved the art of rhetoric more than the practice of virtue, and it was this love that would prove his undoing. In a final attempt for the spotlight, he delivered orations against Mark Antony, one of the heirs to Caesar's power, that were in the style of what today we might call trolling. But Mark Antony did not have a good sense of humor or appreciate the rhetoric. After several days of deliberation, he ordered

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  Cicero's execution. And the fall of this once great man was abrupt and violent and final. Cicero was beheaded, his head, hands, and tongue eventually put on display in the forum and at Mark Antony's house. As one of Caesar's soldiers insightfully wrote in an epitaph for Cicero, "He invited enmity with greater spirit, then he fought it." Now, the Stoics would urge us to get on stage, to get out there, to do big things. Zeno taught us that it was our philosophical duty to participate in public life until we are unable. But none of that matters if we aren't guided by the four virtues, if we aren't willing to do the right thing right now, which is what the justice book is all about, if we're motivated by ambition and ego and appearances.

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  And while it's because of Cicero's work that we now know many of Stoicism's ethical frameworks and principles today, it's fair to say that Cicero wrote but did not live philosophically. And I think a lot about Cicero. Remember Seneca, who was no perfect figure, talks about how we should look at these historical figures, not to judge them, but to see our faults reflected back in us. And when I get on stage, obviously, I talk and write and think a lot about Stoicism. I was just in Australia, as I was telling you. I'm heading back to London and Rotterdam and Dublin and Vancouver and Toronto in November. You can come. We're calling it the Stoic Life Tour because I think about this, like, how do we actually apply it? How do I make sure

• 5:00Ryan Holiday?

  that I'm not just talking about it, but I'm actually being about it? That's what I'm fascinated by, how we apply Stoicism to our actual lives. And that's one of the things I've been talking about, my own struggles with the philosophy, what I've learned in the years since I first wrote The Obstacles Away, and what the Stoics can teach us from their own examples, good and bad. I do hope to see you there. You can grab tickets. London's on November 12th, Rotterdam's on November 13th, Dublin on November 15th, Vancouver on November 18th, and Toronto on November 20th. We've got some VIP packages where you can come to a private Q and A and a bunch of awesome other stuff. You can grab all those tickets at ryanholiday.net/tour. And if you want to learn more about Cicero, check out Lives of the Stoics. He's someone I profiled at length. I find him endlessly fascinating, as endlessly fascinating as

• 5:45Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca, and that's one of the things I'm going to be talking about on stage. So I'm looking forward to kicking that all around with you. That's ryanholiday.net/tour to come see me in Europe and Canada in November.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  Make honesty your only policy. This is this week's meditation from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. As Emperor Marcus Aurelius did not see the best of humanity, leaders never do. At court, there would have been backbiting, people who sold their friends out when they saw an opportunity to advance themselves, avarice and deceit. He especially didn't like faux attempts at honesty. His point, if you have to say, I'm going to be honest with you here, what you're casually saying is that honesty is an exception for you and not the rule, that you're making a special effort to tell the truth here, because you usually don't. And how sad is that?

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's time to think about what these little statements say about us and how to make sure that our default policy is honesty and straightforwardness. And then the two quotes we have from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and then from Seneca's Moral Letters go as follows. "How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to give it to you straight. What are you up to, friend? It shouldn't need to be your announcement, but be seen readily, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes, just as the beloved sees it all in a lover's glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like the smelly goat. You know it when they're in the room with you." I love that quote. That's so great. "A calculated give it to you straight is like a dagger, and there's nothing worse than

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  a wolf befriending sheep. We should avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward, and well-meaning, it should show in your eyes and not escape notice." That's from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 1115. And then Seneca's Moral Letters 109, he says, "It is in keeping with nature to show our friends' affections and to celebrate their advancement, as if it was our very own. For if we don't do this, virtue, which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us." Look, I think this idea that honesty is your best policy is really important. And obviously, we should cultivate a reputation for candor, for straightforwardness, for not holding back, for not being two-faced. If you have an opinion, you put it out there.

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  You don't say one thing in private, another thing in public, right? But I would say, and we had Randall Stutman on the Daily Stoic Podcast and in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge recently, and he did push back on this trend of radical candor, that often it can be an excuse for being a jerk. The Stoics take their original roots from the cynics, Diogenes, who walks the streets of Athens just saying whatever he thinks. But I don't particularly admire him. I see him as antisocial. So I think what Marcus is saying, cultivate a reputation for straightforwardness, this is in context of the other Stoic virtues.

• 9:03Ryan Holiday?

  It takes courage to be clear and to voice unpopular opinions and to say what people don't want to hear.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  But it also takes moderation and an understanding of justice to know what opinions to voice, how to voice them, how not to be a jerk about them. You know, radical candor in Wall Street firms, Randall was saying, is, again, often an excuse for asshole bosses to be more of a jerk. And that's not the excuse they need. We want to be both straightforward as well as restrained. And I know that seems a little contradictory, but, well, life is complicated and it's about balance. So when we say we want to be the smelly goat in the room, and someone who owns goats, let me tell you, man, goats can stink. I can sometimes smell my neighbor's goats. He's like a half mile away. I'll catch a whiff of it in the wind.

• 9:52Ryan Holiday?

  A male goat, this sort of musk they have, man, it is repulsive. It's disgusting. I don't think that's what Marcus is saying. I think he's being a bit exaggerated. He's just saying that, you know, these, "I'm gonna be level with you here." Or when we say, "I don't mean any offense," or "no offense intended," you really did mean, you're a, you can almost expect that the next words out of this person's mouth are gonna be really poorly thought out, not so nice things. And so I think we should take some time here to think about this balance. This is what temperance is really about, right? Just in the way that courage is a midpoint between cowardice and recklessness.

• 10:32Ryan Holiday?

  I'd like to think that honesty is a line somewhere between omission, not saying things, and saying too many things, or something like to that regard, if you get what I'm saying. It's, it's that, yes, we have to tell the truth, but you don't have to tell someone that you find them repulsive today. You don't have to tell them that you really hate the sound of their voice, right? There are things you can keep to yourself. And I guess I just wanted to add a little color to this week's meditation, that being a stoic, and there was an interesting lawsuit recently, a workplace lawsuit, where a man claimed that stoicism was his religion, and therefore the offensive things he said at

• 11:16Ryan Holiday?

  work, the way he comported himself and behaved, even Some of his hygiene habits, he could not be fired for them because they were his religious beliefs. But when you really look at the remarks that he was defending, the way that he's behaving, it's true that he's actually just a jerk. And that's not what we're talking about. So all things in moderation, including this kind of honesty that we're talking about for Marcus Aurelius, have an identifiable scent that you are an honest person, but don't be a stinky goat.

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.