201207 What I learned in my studies this morning

From Eric Hoffer: 

Any group not part of the majority naturally feels a sense of insecurity. Those bent to preserve their identity feel it's less than those determined to blend in with the majority. They feel the prejudice and discrimination more keenly. This is more true the further you go on to range of success. The most successful and the least successful feel it more strongly than those in the middle.

(The True Believer, IX-40) 

From Cicero: 

While not a Stoic per se, he was intimately familiar with Stoicism.  He once called it "the only true philosophy," but he did not have the moral strength to live up to its principles.  His guiding lights were love of fame, love of honor (i.e. veneration), and love of power. He achieved all three, often by means antithetical to Stoic principles.

Later in life, after he had fallen from the heights of political power and financial wealth, he ended up accused by the very powers that be whom he tried to set against one another in a new civil war.

The lesson, it seems, is that success in worldly matters is no substitute for success in personal virtue and philosophical living.

(Lives of the Stoics, pp. 115-133)