“We have two ears and one mouth, so that we may listen more and speak less.”
— Zeno of CitiumReported saying in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.23; approximate English rendering
Commentary
This saying is among the best attested of Zeno's reported sayings, preserved in the chreiai, or short anecdotes and maxims, that Diogenes Laertius gathers in his account of the Stoics. Its advice on restraint in speech is conventional in Greek moral writing, but its transmission in Zeno's name associates it with the Stoic ideal of self-command. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers (1987), note that the Stoics regarded speech as a potential site of emotional disturbance, and that counsels of silence served to protect the rational mind. Brad Inwood, in Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (1985), argues that such maxims were used pedagogically to train students in the habit of assent, which requires the restraint of impulse. Malcolm Schofield has observed that chreiai of this kind circulated widely in the Hellenistic schools and were often attributed to founders, so that their precise authenticity is uncertain. Julia Annas, in her study of Hellenistic ethics, reminds readers that the saying's wording is a later formulation rather than a verified utterance. The English is an approximate rendering of a Greek anecdote, and the source should be checked in Diogenes Laertius before quotation.
Commentary
This saying is among the best attested of Zeno's reported sayings, preserved in the chreiai, or short anecdotes and maxims, that Diogenes Laertius gathers in his account of the Stoics. Its advice on restraint in speech is conventional in Greek moral writing, but its transmission in Zeno's name associates it with the Stoic ideal of self-command. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers (1987), note that the Stoics regarded speech as a potential site of emotional disturbance, and that counsels of silence served to protect the rational mind. Brad Inwood, in Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (1985), argues that such maxims were used pedagogically to train students in the habit of assent, which requires the restraint of impulse. Malcolm Schofield has observed that chreiai of this kind circulated widely in the Hellenistic schools and were often attributed to founders, so that their precise authenticity is uncertain. Julia Annas, in her study of Hellenistic ethics, reminds readers that the saying's wording is a later formulation rather than a verified utterance. The English is an approximate rendering of a Greek anecdote, and the source should be checked in Diogenes Laertius before quotation.