"Stranger, here you do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."  
-  On a sign at the entrance to the Garden of Epicurus in Athens. 

It is important to understand that very few of the hundreds of essays and other writings by Epicurus survived from ancient times.  They were lost due to document degradation, earthquakes, fires, destruction and looting by invading hostile armies, and the intentional destruction by priests and monks of "pagan" works after the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine.  Epicurean, hedonistic, and atheistic works are anathema and banned to this day by Christian and Moslem clerics.  In ancient Greece, the famous philosopher Socrates was executed on the charge of corrupting the youth with impious ideas, and many other philosophers had to flee for their lives because of similar alleged non-conformity with local religious customs.  Epicurus did not deny that gods existed, he just held the view that gods were not in any way interested in human affairs.  Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic other ancient philosophical schools, like preachers and priests today, falsely and incorrectly claimed that all male and female Epicureans were immoral, unethical, mere pleasure seekers, and bad. 

"Let thy desire flourish,
In order to let thy heart forget the beatifications for thee.
Follow thy desire, as long as thou shalt live.
Put myrrh upon thy head and clothing of fine linen upon thee,
Being anointed with genuine marvels of the gods' property.
Set an increase to thy good things;
Let not thy heart flag.
Follow thy desire and thy good.
Fulfill thy needs upon earth, after the command of thy heart,
Until there come for thee that day of mourning."
-  Egyptian Paraoh Intef, 11th Dynasty, circa 2150 BCE

"Seven classic objections to hedonism are presented and explained. Each is carefully formulated as an objection to the Default Hedonism introduced in Ch. 2. The objections are based on (a) the idea that some pleasures are base, disgusting, and worthless; (b) the concept of ‘false pleasures’; (c) the alleged worthlessness of pleasure without knowledge; (d) difficulties in the measurement of pleasure and pain; (e) the idea that we can imagine a good life in which there is no pleasure; (f) the idea that the value of some worlds might be directly affected by such things as beauty or ugliness even when these factors have no bearing on the amounts of pleasure and pain in those worlds; and (g) the idea that the value of a world might be affected by the justice or injustice of the distribution of pleasure and pain in that world even though the total amounts of pleasure and pain are not affected."
-  From Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism.

"The chief part of a person's happiness consists of pleasure."
-  Thomas More, Utopia, 1516

"We were born for cooperation.  Like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth.  So to work in opposition to one another is against nature; and anger or rejection is opposition."
-  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 1, Ch. 1. 

"We recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good."
-  Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

"Philosophical hedonists tend to focus on hedonistic theories of value, and especially of well-being (the good life for the one living it). As a theory of value, hedonism states that all and only pleasure is intrinsically valuable and all and only pain is intrinsically not valuable. Hedonists usually define pleasure and pain broadly, such that both physical and mental phenomena are included. Thus, a gentle massage and recalling a fond memory are both considered to cause pleasure and stubbing a toe and hearing about the death of a loved one are both considered to cause pain. With pleasure and pain so defined, hedonism as a theory about what is valuable for us is intuitively appealing. Indeed, its appeal is evidenced by the fact that nearly all historical and contemporary treatments of well-being allocate at least some space for discussion of hedonism."
-  Hedonism:  Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Life, death, preservation, loss, failure, success, poverty, riches, worthiness, unworthiness, slander, fame, hunger, thirst, cold, heat─ these are the alterations of the world, the workings of fate.  Day and night they change place before us and wisdom cannot spy out their source.  Therefore, they should not be enough to destroy your harmony; they should not be allowed to enter the storehouse of the spirit.  If you can harmonize and delight in them, master them and never be a a loss for joy, if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mind─ this is what I call being whole in power."
-  Zhuangzi, Burton Watson translation, p. 69.; Zhuangzi Section 5, circa 300 BCE. 

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think ..."
-  Jeremy Bentham, The Principals of Morals and Legislation

"Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the primary or most important intrinsic good.  In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain).  Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them, assuming that their actions do not infringe on the equal rights of others. It is also the idea that every person's pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain. Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates. He held the idea that pleasure is the highest good.  The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" (ἡδονισμός hēdonismos from ἡδονή hēdonē "pleasure", cognate with English sweet + suffix -ισμός -ismos "ism").
-  Hedonism - Wikipedia 

"It would be a condition of no pleasure and no pain classifiable as kinetic, but it would by no means be a condition of no pleasure and no pain at all. It would in fact be a condition of pleasure arising from the simple, undisturbed, undistracted, awareness of oneself, and of one's openness to the world through specific sensory inputs, but without being currently engaged with any. It would be an active awareness of one's constitution as a particular sort of animal—a constitution for such sensory engagement. And, one would not be experiencing this pleasant awareness unless one's condition were one of normal healthiness and ongoing natural functioning: if one's condition were not such, one would be experiencing some disturbing movements in one's consciousness—unhealthy or disturbed and distorted functioning is just what does cause kinetic pain. Accordingly, to pleasure arising in this second set of circumstances for the arousal of pleasure, Epicurusgave the name "katastematic," drawing upon a Greek term for a condition or state, or for the constitution, of a thing. It is called "katastematic" not so to indicate a special kind of pleasure, any more than kinetic pleasures are a kind of pleasure, but rather so as to draw attention to the special circumstances of pleasure's arousal, on which it is conditioned, in the case of this pleasure. We would describe this pleasure as pleasure in the awareness of the healthy functioning of one's own natural constitution, physical and psychic."
- John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom, 2012, p. 234

"I. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain. subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved.

II. The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work: it will be proper therefore at the outset to give an explicit and determinate account of what is meant by it. By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever. according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.

III. By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then the happiness of that individual.

IV. The interest of the community is one of the most general expressions that can occur in the phraseology of morals: no wonder that the meaning of it is often lost. When it has a meaning, it is this. The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what is it?—the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

V. It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest, of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures: or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of his pains.

VI. An action then may be said to be conformable to then principle of utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility, (meaning with respect to the community at large) when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.

VII. A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it.

VIII. When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle of utility, it may be convenient, for the purposes of discourse, to imagine a kind of law or dictate, called a law or dictate of utility: and to speak of the action in question, as being conformable to such law or dictate."
-  Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, Chapter 1, 1823

"Greek culture was so lively and such fun.  It had theatres and athletics, some fascinating books, and a refined style of dining, the symposium.  By comparison it must have been rather dull to be a Jew in the evenings before the Greeks came.  In their trading and art, their warfare and intellectuality, their literature and their culture, the Greeks towered over their Asian subjects.  In reaction, only Jews wrote anything literary, but it was minor stuff, largely taking refuge in divine revelation and sacred 'wisdom.' "
-  Robin Lane Fox, "Hellenistic Culture and Literature," essay found in The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, p. 398

Pleasure, Enjoyment, Delight, Sensuality:  Quotations, Sayings, Poems, Information

"The consummation of desire is thus a necessarily disillusioning experience for the modern hedonist as it constitutes the ‘testing’ of his day-dream against reality, the resultant recognition that something is missing. The real experience in question may yield considerable pleasure, some of which may not have been anticipated, but despite this, much of the quality of the dream-pleasure is bound to be absent. In fact, the more skilled the individual is as a ‘dream-artist’, then the greater this element of disillusionment is likely to be. A certain dissatisfaction with reality is thus bound to mark the outlook of the dedicated hedonist, something which may, under appropriate circumstances, prompt a turning to fantasy. It is more likely, however, that the dream will be carried forward and attached to some new object of desire such that the illusory pleasures may, once more, be re-experienced. In this way, the modern hedonist is continually withdrawing from reality as fast as he encounters it, ever-casting day-dreams forward in time, attaching them to objects of desire, and then subsequently ‘unhooking’ from these objects as and when they are attained and experienced.

    It can easily be appreciated how this alters the very nature of desiring from that which characterizes traditional hedonism. There it is usual to desire that which one knows, and has had experience of in the past, or alternatively, perhaps, to be curious (if apprehensive) about something new which one is introduced to in the present. But in modern hedonism the tendency to employ imagination to perfect pleasures and project these on to future experience means that one will probably desire that which one has had no experience of at all. This may, however, be more than a matter of casting an illusory spell over a real object and then identifying it with something in our dreams, as we may believe int he reality of our dreams before actually ‘discovering’ anything in reality which corresponds to them. To that extent, our behaviour may correspond to an imaginatively initiated, diffuse search for an ‘unknown’ object to desire. This characteristic feature of modern hedonism is best labelled ‘longing’, something which differs from desiring insofar as it occurs without the presence of any real object.

    In other words, although one must always desire something, one can long for… one knows not what."
-  Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism

Yang Zhu taught, “If everyone does not harm a single hair, and if everyone does not benefit the world, the world will be well governed of itself.” Or, "weiwo 為我, each for himself, self-preservation."  In other words, everyone should mind their own business, neither giving nor taking from others, and be content with what he has, and in that way one will be happy and also contribute to the welfare of the world.
-  Yang Zhu (440-360 BCE)

"Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire."
-  Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

"We should take care to lay in a stock of provisions, but not of pleasures: these should be gathered day by day."
"Much more genius is needed to make love than to command armies."
-  Anne Ninon de l'Enclos

"I am profoundly opposed to the philosophy of hedonism. Hedonism is the doctrine which holds that the good is whatever gives you pleasure and, therefore, pleasure is the standard of morality. Objectivism holds that the good must be defined by a rational standard of value, that pleasure is not a first cause, but only a consequence, that only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgment can be regarded as moral, that pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality. To say that pleasure should be the standard of morality simply means that whichever values you happen to have chosen, consciously or subconsciously, rationally or irrationally, are right and moral. This means that you are to be guided by chance feelings, emotions and whims, not by your mind. My philosophy is the opposite of hedonism. I hold that one cannot achieve happiness by random, arbitrary or subjective means. One can achieve happiness only on the basis of rational values. By rational values, I do not mean anything that a man may arbitrarily or blindly declare to be rational. It is the province of morality, of the science of ethics, to define for men what is a rational standard and what are the rational values to pursue."
-  Ayn Rand, Playboy Interview, 1964 

"Life is full of suffering, and so its chief purpose is pleasure. There is no god, and no afterlife; men are the helpless puppets of the blind natural forces that made them, and that gave them their unchosen ancestry and their inalienable character. The wise man will accept this fate without complaint, but will not be fooled by all the nonsense of Confucius and Mo Ti about inherent virtue, universal love, and a good name: morality is a deception practiced upon the simple by the clever; universal love is the delusion of children who do not know the universal enmity that forms the law of life; and a good name is a posthumous bauble which the fools who paid so dearly for it cannot enjoy."
-  Yang Zhu - Ancient History Encyclopedia

Ten Basic Epicurean Values

1)  Prudence
2)  Self-management
3)  Self-sufficiency
4)  Serenity
5)  Simplicity
6)  Friendliness
7)  Honesty
8)  Generosity
9)  Cheerfulness
10)  Gentleness

-  Epicurus, 341-270 BCE 

"The philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) was a complete and interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance), an empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, together with the perception of pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the emergence of human societies. Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms, he could disprove the possibility of the soul's survival after death, and hence the prospect of punishment in the afterlife. He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires. The elimination of the fears and corresponding desires would leave people free to pursue the pleasures, both physical and mental, to which they are naturally drawn, and to enjoy the peace of mind that is consequent upon their regularly expected and achieved satisfaction. It remained to explain how irrational fears arose in the first place: hence the importance of an account of social evolution. Epicurus was aware that deeply ingrained habits of thought are not easily corrected, and thus he proposed various exercises to assist the novice. His system included advice on the proper attitude toward politics (avoid it where possible) and the gods (do not imagine that they concern themselves about human beings and their behavior), the role of sex (dubious), marriage (also dubious) and friendship (essential), reflections on the nature of various meteorological and planetary phenomena, about which it was best to keep an open mind in the absence of decisive verification, and explanations of such processes as gravity and magnetism, which posed considerable challenges to the ingenuity of the earlier atomists. Although the overall structure of Epicureanism was designed to hang together and to serve its principal ethical goals, there was room for a great deal of intriguing philosophical argument concerning every aspect of the system, from the speed of atoms in a void to the origin of optical illusions."
-  Epicurus - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Cynicism is one of the most striking of all the Hellenistic philosophies. It offered people the possibility of happiness and freedom from suffering in an age of uncertainty. Although there was never an official cynic doctrine, the fundamental principles of cynicism can be summarised as follows:

• The goal of life is eudaimonia and mental clarity or lucidity (ἁτυφια) - freedom from smoke (τύφος) which signified ignorance, mindlessness, folly, and conceit.
• Eudaimonia is achieved by living in accord with Nature as understood by human reason.
• Arrogance (τύφος) is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions, unnatural desires, and a vicious character.
• Eudaimonia, or human flourishing, depends on self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια), equanimity, arete, love of humanity, parrhesia and indifference to the vicissitudes of life (ἁδιαφορία).
• One progresses towards flourishing and clarity through ascetic practices (ἄσκησις) which help one become free from influences – such as wealth, fame, and power – that have no value in Nature. Examples include Diogenes' practice of living in a tub and walking barefoot in winter.
• A cynic practices shamelessness or impudence (Αναιδεια) and defaces the nomos of society; the laws, customs, and social conventions which people take for granted.

Thus a cynic has no property and rejects all conventional values of money, fame, power and reputation. A life lived according to nature requires only the bare necessities required for existence, and one can become free by unshackling oneself from any needs which are the result of convention."
-  Cynicism, Wikipedia

Tranquility, Equanimity, Peace of Mind 

"I possess.  I am not possessed."
-  Aristippus of Cyrene

"De gustibus non est disputandum, or de gustibus non disputandum est, is a Latin maxim meaning "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes" (literally "about tastes, it should not be disputed/discussed"). The implication is that everyone's personal preferences are merely subjective opinions that cannot be right or wrong, so they should never be argued about as if they were. Sometimes the phrase is expanded as De gustibus et coloribus... referring to tastes and colors. The phrase is most commonly rendered in English as "There is no accounting for taste" (or "There is no accounting for tastes")."
-  Wikipedia

"While Socrates pursued truth and sought understanding, Aristippus simplified the teaching of his master by claiming the highest truth one could attain was the recognition that pleasure was the purpose of human existence and the pursuit of pleasure was the meaning of life.  In this, and in his scorn for those who complicated matters by thinking too precisely on them, he would be a kindred spirit of the Chinese hedonist philosopher Yang Zhu (440-360 BCE) who claimed that concerns about "right" and "wrong" were a waste of time because there is no god, no afterlife, and no reward for suffering needlessly by denying oneself when one could as easily, and more sensibly, enjoy life in the present."
-  Joshua J. Mark, Aristippus of Cyrene

"Philosophers commonly distinguish between psychological hedonism and ethical hedonism. Psychological hedonism is the view that humans are psychologically constructed in such a way that we exclusively desire pleasure. Ethical hedonism is the view that our fundamental moral obligation is to maximize pleasure or happiness. Ethical hedonism is most associated with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (342-270 BCE.) who taught that our life's goal should be to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. In fact, all of our actions should have that aim."
-  Utilitarian Resources 

"For Epicurus, the only criterion for deciding on one's way of life is what will work out best form the point of view on one's own pursuit of a continuous experience of katastematic pleasure, varied suitably so as to conform to one's own, perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic, preferences among sources of kinetic pleasure."
- John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom, 2012, p. 263

"Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you." 
-  Confucius, Analects 15:23

Golden Rules Chronology

"Little is needed to make a wise man happy, but nothing can content a fool.  This is why nearly all men are miserable."
-  La Rochefoucauld

"Desire is a subject upon which ... true views can only be arrived at by an almost complete reversal of the ordinary unreflecting option."
-  Bertrand Russell

"Many of our most profound, life-affecting desires are not rational, in the sense that we don't use rational thought processes to form them.  Indeed, we don't form them; they form themselves within us.  They simply pop into our heads, uninvited and unannounced.  While they reside there, they take control of our lives.  A single rogue desire can trample the plans we had for our lives and thereby alter our destinies."
-  William B. Irvine, On Desire, p. 12 

"Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire."
-  Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

The Calculus of Felicity

Intensity:  How powerful is the pleasure?
Duration:  How long lasting is the pleasure?
Certainty:  How guaranteed is the pleasure?
Proximity:  How close is the pleasure?
Fecundity:  Will this pleasurable activity generate additional pleasures?
Purity: How pain-free is this particular pleasure?
Extent:  How many other persons will experience this pleasure?

-  Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832 
   We might add:  Financial: What is the cost of the objects that provide the pleasure?  Environmental:  What are the
   consequences to our environment if we indulge in this pleasure? 

"Enjoy and have others enjoy, without doing harm to yourself or anyone else; that is all there is to morality."
-  Nicolas Chamfort

"The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.  By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure."
-  Jeremy Bentham, found in John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. 

Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo
I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care
-  Epicurus, a tombstone epitaph, 4 Feb 341 - 270 BCE

Ten Golden Rules for Living the Good Life

  
“1. Examine life, engage life with vengeance; always search for new pleasures and new destines to reach with your mind.
 2.  Worry only about the things that are in your control, the things that can be influenced and changed by your actions, not about the things that are beyond your capacity to direct or alter. 
 3.  Treasure Friendship, the reciprocal attachment that fills the need for affiliation. Friendship cannot be acquired in the market place, but must be nurtured and treasured in relations imbued with trust and amity. 
 4.  Experience True Pleasure. Avoid shallow and transient pleasures. Keep your life simple. Seek calming pleasures that contribute to peace of mind. True pleasure is disciplined and restrained. 
 5.  Master Yourself. Resist any external force that might delimit thought and action; stop deceiving yourself, believing only what is personally useful and convenient; complete liberty necessitates a struggle within, a battle to subdue negative psychological and spiritual forces that preclude a healthy existence; self mastery requires ruthless cador. 
 6.  Avoid Excess. Live life in harmony and balance. Avoid excesses. Even good things, pursued or attained without moderation, can become a source of misery and suffering. 
 7.  Be a Responsible Human Being. Approach yourself with honesty and thoroughness; maintain a kind of spiritual hygiene; stop the blame-shifting for your errors and shortcomings. 
 8.  Don’t Be a Prosperous Fool. Prosperity by itself, is not a cure-all against an ill-led life, and may be a source of dangerous foolishness. Money is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the good life, for happiness and wisdom. 
 9.  Don’t Do Evil to Others. Evildoing is a dangerous habit, a kind of reflex too quickly resorted to and too easily justified that has a lasting and damaging effect upon the quest for the good life. Harming others claims two victims—the receiver of the harm, and the victimizer, the one who does harm. 
 10.  Kindness towards others tends to be rewarded. Kindness to others is a good habit that supports and reinforces the quest for the good life. Helping others bestows a sense of satisfaction that has two beneficiaries—the beneficiary, the receiver of the help, and the benefactor, the one who provides the help.” 

-   By M. A. Soupious and Panos Mourdoukoutas, The Ten Golden Rules: Ancient Wisdom from the Greek Philosophers on Living the Good Life, 2009. 

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One must know how to conserve onself: the hardest test of independence."
-  Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 41 

"It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate but the old man who as lived well, because the young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man has docked in the harbour, have safeguarded his true happiness."
-  Epicurus 

“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.”
-  Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Pulling Onions 

Over 866 quips, sayings, observations, humor, jokes, aphorisms, and remarks by Mike Garofalo. 

Fate deals runs of good cards, runs of bad cards, runs of good and bad cards; but Fate only works part-time as a card dealer, for fun. 

The most complex minds in ordinary bodies enjoy simple pleasures. 

Disorderliness produces anxiety and discomfort, and occasionally fear. 

By decreasing your desires you actually diversify and and increase your pleasures and satisfaction. 

Serenity is often discovered in silence. 

Tending a garden is often a tranquil place of mind. 

Private masturbation is intense and efficient, lechery with others wastes a lot of time and money and exposes you to diseases.  

Most pleasures grow stale, become taken for granted, and provide lowering levels of satisfaction with the unneeded and excessive repetition of those pleasures. 

The experience of being touched needs elaboration in terms of time, place, participants, wanted intimate behavior, intentions, etc. 

The meaning of life is to give it some meaning.

Epicureans, Hedonists, Cyrenaics, Free Thought, Skeptical, Liberal, Secular, Humanistic, and Utilitarian Thinkers

Chronology 

Brihaspati (600 BCE)  Information: Charvaka Lokayatika School

Aristippus of Cyrene (435–356 BCE)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Yang Zhu (440-360 BCE)  Information:  Ancient History Encyclopedia, Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Aristotle (384–322 BCE)   Information: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,  Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  

Epicurus (341-270 BCE)  Information:  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,  Wikipedia Encyclopedia,  Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

Titus Lucretius Carus (99-55 BCE)   Information:   Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Sextus Empiricus (160-210 CE)  Information:  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Al-Ma'arri (973-1057)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia  

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

John Locke (1602-1734)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Anne Ninon de l'Enclos (1620-1705)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jean Meslier (1664-1729)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Baron D'Holbach (1723-1789)  Information: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,  Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)  Information:  Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)  Information:  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,  Wikipedia Encyclopedia,  Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)  Information:  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Karl Marx (1818-1883)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)   Information 

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

John Dewey (1859-1952)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)  Information:  Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Albert Ellis (1913-2007)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

José Saramago (1922-2010)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia  

Hugh Hefner (1926-)  Information:  Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Woody Allen (1935-)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Richard Dawkins (1941-)  Information:  Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

Michel Onfray (1959-)  Information: Wikipedia Encyclopedia 

I share many of the philosophical and non-religious views so persuasively and emphatically expressed by Dan Barker, Jeremy Bentham, Luther Burbank, André Comte-Sponville, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, John Dewey, Albert Ellis, Epicurus, A.C. Grayling, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Baron d'Holbach, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Ingersoll, Paul Kurtz, Corliss Lamont, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Michel Onfray, Ayn Rand, Richard Rorty, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Friedrich Schleirmacher, Baruch Spinoza, George Smith, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many other intelligent, hard working, courageous, forthright, dynamic, honest, fulfilled, and wise persons.  These free-thinkers give me hope!  Many, but not all, favored Epicurean and Hedonistic viewpoints.  These persons often had different political and social viewpoints.  All were and non-religious or atheists.  Most were materialists. 

Don't Be Misled by the Name-Calling Haters of Hedonism