Quote of the Day by Epicurus: ‘Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not…’

Quote of the Day: Epicurus was a Greek philosopher, author of an ethical philosophy of simple pleasure, friendship, and retirement. Born in 341 BC in Samos, Greece, he founded schools of philosophy that survived directly from the 4th century BC until the 4th century AD. He was born on the island of Samos of Athenian parents who had gone there as military settlers, according to Britannica.

His father, a schoolteacher, was named Neocles, and his mother was named Chairestrate; both were of the same village, the deme Gargettos. Epicurus began his study of philosophy at the age of 14, according to his own report. He died in 270 in Athens.

Quote of the Day by Epicurus: ‘Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist’


Meaning of Quote of the Day: This quote captures the core of Epicurus’s philosophy on fear and human anxiety. He argues that death should not trouble us because it is never something we actually experience. While we are alive, death has not yet arrived; when death arrives, we no longer exist to experience it. Therefore, there is never a point at which “we” and “death” coexist. From his perspective, fearing death is irrational because fear requires a subject to experience harm or suffering, and in death, there is no conscious subject left.

Epicurus believed much of human unhappiness stems from unnecessary fears, especially the fear of death and punishment in an afterlife. He rejected the idea that death is painful or something to dread. For him, death is simply the absence of sensation, much like the state before we were born. Just as we do not suffer from the time before our birth, we will not suffer after death. In this way, he reframes death not as a frightening event but as a natural boundary of life.