Marcus Aurelius Quote on the Morning: The People You Meet

Quote

"When you arise in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and I know that this wrongdoer before me is my kin — not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and a portion of the same divine reason. Therefore none of them can hurt me." — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2, Chapter 1 (2nd century CE)

Author

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE and the last of the great Stoic philosophers. His Meditations, written in Greek in the notebooks of his campaigns, are the private record of his practice of Stoic self-examination, and the opening of Book 2 preserves his morning meditation.

Source

The quotation opens Book 2 of the Meditations. The work is a series of personal notes rather than a treatise, and this passage is the most famous of the morning exercises that structure the book. The translation follows Gregory Hays's Modern Library edition (2002).

Context

The passage is the morning meditation of the Stoic emperor, and its context is the daily discipline of the Stoic life. Marcus rose each day to the burdens of the empire: the administration, the intrigues, the wars, the endless dealings with people who were, as he knew from experience, meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. The meditation prepares him for this day. It does not deceive itself about the people he will meet — it takes them as they are, in the plain language of experience. But it does not leave him at the level of irritation: it reminds him that their faults are the faults of ignorance, that he himself knows the difference between good and evil, and that even the wrongdoer is his kin — "the same mind, and a portion of the same divine reason."

Meaning

The quotation is the model of the Stoic preparation for the day, and it contains the three disciplines. The first movement is the discipline of action: the recognition of what the day will bring, and the resolution to meet it — "the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant." The second movement is the discipline of assent: the explanation of their behavior — "they are like this because they cannot tell good from evil" — which converts irritation into understanding. The third movement is the discipline of the cosmopolitan: the recognition of kinship — "this wrongdoer before me is my kin... the same mind, and a portion of the same divine reason" — which converts understanding into compassion. And the conclusion — "therefore none of them can hurt me" — states the promise of the Stoic discipline: the person who has prepared, understood, and recognized the kinship is immune to the day's provocations, because their peace no longer depends on the behavior of others.

Related Wisdom

The quotation belongs to the Stoic practice of daily meditation and the discipline of prosoche. Its three movements — preparation, understanding, compassion — are the model of the morning meditation that structures the Stoic day, and its recognition of kinship grounds the Stoic ethics of cosmopolitanism. The passage is among the most quoted in the Stoic wisdom tradition, and it is the source of the modern Stoic practice of preparing for the day's difficulties in advance.