Zeno of Citium
Note: Zeno of Citium is not to be confused with Zeno of Elea.
Zeno of Citium (The Stoic) (333 BC-264 BC) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium, Cyprus. Zeno was the son of a merchant and a student of Crates of Thebes. Zeno was, himself, a merchant until the age of 42, when he started the Stoic school of philosophy. Named for his teaching platform, the Painted Porch ("stoa" is Greek for "porch"), his teachings were the beginning of Stoicism. None of Zeno's works have survived, but he is believed to have taught that tranquility can best be reached via indifference to pleasure and pain.
Zeno is also the first utopian anarchist and thus an important precursor of the anarchism we know today. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Isaiah Berlin describes Zeno's beliefs as follows: "men are rational, the do not need control; rational beings have no need of a state, or of money, or of law-courts, or of any organised, institutional life. In the perfect society men and women shall wear identical clothes and 'feed in a common pasture."
There is a crater on the Moon named in his honor.
Quotes attributed to Zeno of Citium
- "Steel your sensibilities, so that life shall hurt you as little as possible."
- "Follow where reason leads."
- "Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue." (while drunk on wine)
- "We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say."