Daily Inspiration Quote by Epictetus

A Stoic telling you to tolerate every religion is less kumbaya than it first sounds; its sharpness is in the quiet demotion of religion itself. Epictetus isn’t celebrating competing doctrines so much as sidelining them. “Must be tolerated” reads like a civic minimum, not an endorsement. The kicker is the second clause: “every man must get to heaven in his own way.” That phrasing turns salvation into a private itinerary. It’s not a collective project, not a state mandate, not a priestly monopoly. It’s personal practice, judged ultimately by the individual’s alignment with the good, not by winning theological arguments.

The subtext is quintessentially Stoic: what matters is what’s in your control. You can’t control other people’s beliefs, rituals, or metaphysical claims; you can control your own character, your own response, your own discipline. Tolerance becomes less a moral performance than a practical recognition of limits. Fighting over gods is, in Stoic terms, volunteering for unnecessary disturbance.

Context helps. Epictetus lived under Roman imperial pluralism, where cults, philosophies, and imported religions mixed under a political umbrella that prized order. Stoicism often played well with that reality: keep the peace, keep your mind. The line also contains an elegant sting for zealots. If “heaven” is reached “in his own way,” coercion is not just cruel; it’s conceptually incoherent. You can’t force someone into an inner life you don’t control.