20 Stoic Quotes On Managing Anger

Anger has the ability to destroy the foundation of who we are, hijacking our emotions and our capacity for reason and, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus teaches us, drags us down to the level of a wild beast, petty and malignant.

To the Stoics, anger is an emotion that erodes the fabric of who we are, causing us to behave in ways that do not align with our values, morals and beliefs, and in doing so pushes us away from the person we want to be and the life we want to lead. Often this push is towards unethical, destructive and unvirtuous behaviour.

These thinkers from ancient Greece believed the path to happiness and a good life is found through a life of virtue, reason, and behaviour that is deliberate and in alignment with our morality. Negative emotion, of which anger is one, not only prevents this but acts in contrast to it.

When faced with hardship, adversity or the behaviour of others, the Stoics argued that these events should not be permitted to control our emotions and our thoughts. Instead we should practice self-control, detachment and focus on what we can do to improve the situation, whether that be remove ourselves from the source of pain, or work towards rising above it or passing though it with our peace of mind still in tact.

In general the ancient Stoics saw anger as an irrational and destructive emotion, one that has the ability to destroy a life in seconds, and one that pulls us away from living the lives we want through its ability to ambush and control our emotions and actions. As an antidote they prescribe the practices of self control, rational thinking, perspective and the reminder that we only really have control over our thoughts and our actions, and these two things should never be handed over.