“You have power over your mind”: a Stoic idea, not Marcus’s words

The verdict

There is nothing wrong with the thought. The problem is the quotation marks. The words are a modern restatement, and the passages Marcus did write say the same thing more precisely, with a book and section number you can look up.

How we checked

We searched George Long’s 1862 translation of the Meditations, the complete public-domain English text this site quotes, for the whole sentence and for its distinctive words. The sentence isn’t there. Neither is the phrase outside events: the word outside appears in only two sections, and no form of realize appears anywhere. The quote checker, which searches Long’s Marcus and Epictetus and Aubrey Stewart’s Seneca, finds no passage close to the full line.

Long’s English is old, so we also asked a looser question. Does any single section make the line’s three claims: that your mind is in your power, that outside things are not, and that seeing this makes you strong? One does, in its own words:

The three moves come in the same order. “I can have that opinion about anything which I ought to have” is the power over your mind. His claim that things “external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind” is the not outside events. And “thou standest erect” is the strength. The viral sentence looks like a loose modern paraphrase of this section, though without knowing who first wrote it we can’t be sure.

The paraphrase drops the context, and the context changes the claim. Marcus isn’t promising strength to anyone who has a realization. He is writing about keeping his principles alive, and the power he claims takes work: it is in his power “continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame” (Meditations 7.2).

Most pages that share the line give no section number. Some cite 8.47, which is below; it is about judgment too, but it is a different and narrower sentence. We haven’t been able to find who first wrote the line, or when. It travels the way many misattributed lines do: quote images, quote apps and list articles copy one another, and the reference falls away. It lasts because it is short, sounds Roman and says something true. Fake Stoic quotes has more lines with the same history.

Where the idea comes from

The thought behind the line goes back to Epictetus, who puts it at the very start of the Enchiridion, the short handbook of his teaching compiled by his student Arrian:

Read against this, the viral line compresses Epictetus’s division. “Your mind” stands in for Epictetus’s first list: opinion, desire, aversion, and the impulse to go after something or turn away from it. “Outside events” stands in for the second list, which is wider than events. It includes your own body, your property and your reputation. And the promise of strength echoes his contrast between the two: what is in our power is “by nature free, not subject to restraint or hindrance” (Enchiridion 1), while everything else is “weak, slavish” and in the power of others.

Marcus knew this teaching. In the first book of the Meditations he thanks his teacher Rusticus for sharing the discourses of Epictetus from his own collection (Meditations 1.7). The modern name for Epictetus’s division is the dichotomy of control, and our guide to it covers the idea in full.

What Marcus did write about the mind

Marcus comes back to this idea again and again, and he usually frames it the same way: events can’t reach the mind, and what disturbs us is our opinion of them. Three more passages say it most clearly.

This is the passage about retreating into yourself instead of to a house in the country. Of the two principles Marcus wants close at hand, the first is the one the viral line is reaching for: “things do not touch the soul,” and “our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within” (Meditations 4.3). There is a full reading of the section on Meditations 4.3.

Some pages give this section as the source of the viral line. It is more exact than the line. What is in your power is not your mind in general but a particular judgment: “it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now” (Meditations 8.47). Then he blocks the misreading the line invites. If what pains you is that you aren’t doing something you think is right, the answer is not a change of attitude: “why dost thou not rather act than complain?” Only if the thing truly can’t be done does he let it go, because then “the cause of its not being done depends not on thee.”

The shortest version reads like a diary entry. Marcus doesn’t claim power over events here. He reports finding that the trouble was never among them: it was “not outside, but within and in my opinions” (Meditations 9.13). If you know this line in a version that speaks of anxiety, that is a modern translation; Long’s word is trouble. What the Stoics taught about worry puts it to work.

What the line gets right, and what it leaves out

The line points attention in the right direction. Three things get lost in the compression.

The power is narrower than it sounds. Epictetus means your judgments and choices: what you take to be true, what you set out to do, what you want and avoid. He doesn’t mean every thought or feeling. Seneca describes the first stirring of an emotion as involuntary, something reason cannot stop (On Anger 2.4, in our words). A jolt of anger when someone cuts you off in traffic just happens. What is up to you is whether you agree that this is an outrage worth chasing. Stoicism and emotions goes into this.

Outside events still get your effort. A delayed flight is not in your power. Rebooking, eating something and being decent to the gate agent are. As 8.47 says, when there is something to do, do it rather than complain.

The strength isn’t a reward for realizing something once. In 7.2 it comes from keeping principles alive. Where Long’s Marcus does use the word strength of the mind, in his reminders about anger, it comes by degrees: in our paraphrase, the nearer a mind comes to freedom from passion, the nearer it comes to strength (Meditations 11.18). Epictetus follows his division with an instruction to apply it to every harsh impression as it comes (Enchiridion 1). It is meant to be repeated until it becomes a habit.

Try it: sort what is up to you

The Stoic version of the line is an exercise, not a slogan. Take one thing that is bothering you today, list its parts, and sort each one into up to me or not up to me. Then choose one thing from the first column to do today. The free Dichotomy of Control exercise walks you through it:

If something has already happened and can’t be changed, the exercise for things you can’t control adds Epictetus’s passage and a step for letting the rest go.

If you want to quote Marcus instead

For a caption, a card or a tattoo, use words he wrote and cite the section and translator:

• “it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47, trans. George Long, 1862)
• “not outside, but within and in my opinions” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.13, trans. George Long, 1862)
• “our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3, trans. George Long, 1862)

If you want the idea at its source, quote Epictetus: “Of things some are in our power, and others are not” (Enchiridion 1, trans. George Long, 1877). Long’s translations are in the public domain, and his Meditations is free to read at Project Gutenberg (opens in a new tab), under the title Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Read the whole section before you print anything, and see how to cite the Stoics for the format.