An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.

Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed.

Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

The summit of pleasure is the elimination of all that gives pain.

We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

Death is nothing to us: for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.