Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visit Dailystoic.com.

This is the most important virtue.

Courage is a pretty obvious choice for being the most important of the foretoe of virtues.

It was Aristotle who said that courage was the mother of all the rest.

In a world that's not virtuous, in a world that's scary, in a world that's difficult,

it takes courage to go out there and do what needs to be done.

Self-discipline is another obvious choice because, well, you can't do anything without it. And as Aristotle pointed out, courage that isn't checked

by temperance quite easily veers into recklessness. And yet, Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice

was the source of all the other virtues. The stoics were clear. The point of philosophy,

the point of life, is to direct a person towards doing what's right.

Courage and service of injustice, discipline aimed at selfish ends, that's not what Marcus or

Epictetus or Zeno would have called the good life. But the fact that you can argue for any of

these three as the most important virtue, as I myself have done, hey, it's Ryan here,

I did this when I announced Courage's calling. I said courage was the most important. And when

discipline is destiny was coming out, said discipline was the most important. And when right thing

right now came out, I said justice was the most important virtue because it guides and balances

the others. But it is, in fact, wisdom that is the most

...