You Need Less Philosophy

"All this reading, all these quotes. This love of learning, our fascination with books. No one is saying it’s a bad thing. Because it isn’t. Still, it’s worth using, from time to time, a quip from Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire on yourself."Learn about that quip in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  "You need less philosophy." All this reading, all these quotes, this love of learning, our fascination with books, no one is saying it's a bad thing, because it isn't. Still, it's worth using from time to time a quip from Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire" on yourself. "Less philosophy," one brother says to his more introspective brother, "and more virtue." It's the same idea in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." It's Epictetus, "Don't talk about your philosophy, embody it." It's Marcus Aurelius, "Waste no more time talking about what a good man is like, be one." Remember, the whole point of Stoicism is what you do, it's who you are. It's the act

• 1:14Ryan Holiday?

  of virtue, not the act of talking about virtue, or reading about it, or writing about it. So today will be a short email, because it's not something to think about. It's just a prompt. Go do what needs to be done. Less philosophy, more virtue. And if you want a reminder of this, you can grab our Four Virtues coin. I carry one in my right pocket at all times. Check that out at dailystoic.com/virtues.