The Marcus Aurelius Quote Tom Junod Can’t Forget

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Daily Stoic
Episode: The Marcus Aurelius Quote Tom Junod Can’t Forget
Date: August 5, 2026
Host: Ryan Holiday
Guest: Tom Junod

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Episode Overview

This episode features a conversation between Ryan Holiday and celebrated writer Tom Junod. They explore the enduring relevance and literary brilliance of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, focusing especially on the personal, immediate voice and one quote that Junod finds unforgettable. The discussion delves into the intersection of philosophy, writing, and human experience, offering both practical wisdom and reflections on the craft of writing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Meditations: Ancient Yet Modern

• Humanity Across Centuries:
  Tom Junod is struck by how Meditations feels like a direct, human voice across time, reminiscent of reading Samuel Pepys.

  • [04:45] Tom Junod: “I had the same feeling reading Marcus Aurelius that I did like when I first read Samuel Pepys, which is like, oh my God, he’s a dude.”
  • Insight: Despite being nearly two millennia old, Marcus' concerns mirror our own.

• Time Travel Element & Relatability:
  Junod emphasizes feeling personally addressed by Marcus, as if he’s speaking straight to the reader, not cloaked in philosophical jargon or ancient ritual.

  • [05:29] Tom Junod: “He’s talking to himself. The book is I think probably addressed to himself. But he’s talking to you. And he’s making sense.”

2. Stoic vs. Christian Approaches to Death

• Contrasting Philosophies:
  Junod highlights how Meditations presents death as a natural fact, in contrast to Christianity’s narrative of sin, death, and hell.
  • [06:18] Tom Junod: “You have Christianity on the other side saying to me, what is the greatest philosophical mistake in the history of humanity? Which is the wages of sin or death? I think that is a mistake ... mankind’s worst invention ... hell.”
  • [06:54] Ryan Holiday: “The Christian argument is like, don’t sin or you will go to hell. And I think the Stoic argument is don’t sin or you will live in hell.”

3. The Unforgettable Marcus Aurelius Quote

• The Best Revenge:
  Junod singles out Marcus’ advice, “The best revenge is to not be like that,” as the most powerful line in Meditations.

  • [07:18] Tom Junod: “Of all the sentences in the book, I’ve circled it three times. I have stars, I have the page dog-eared to it. I mean, that is the sentence in the book that has stood out to me ... that goes there [in my notebook].”

• Impact on Personal Practice:
  Junod says reading Marcus provides a new language for self-talk, influencing his day-to-day worldview.

  • [10:31] Tom Junod: “Reading Marcus Aurelius over the last week, sort of like a new kind of self talk, it’s given me a language in which to address these things. And I’m not bullshitting you on that.”

4. Style, Craft, and the Writer’s Perspective

• Modernity and Directness:
  Both host and guest admire Meditations for its immediate, unornamented prose, speculating that its lack of intended audience helps its relevance.

  • [10:08] Tom Junod: “It was really, really well done and astoundingly modern ... it wasn’t for an audience.”
  • [12:46] Ryan Holiday: “You get that advice about, just be really raw and vulnerable and specific, and that creates the general. And you don’t really believe it. And then this guy writes something for nobody. And it somehow reaches millions of people for 20 centuries.”

• Comparison to Poetry & Self-Help:
  Junod draws a parallel between Aurelius and modern advice writers, noting the therapeutic, personal nature of the writing.

  • [08:40] Tom Junod: “He feels in certain ways like a modern day advice writer ... a so-called self-help writer.”

• Inspiration for Writing:
  Meditations broadened Junod’s sense of what’s possible as a writer—how self-examination can spark creative work.

  • [09:35] Tom Junod: “I was really happy to read it because I’m trying to figure out like what’s my next book to write. ... it basically broadened possibilities for me.”

5. Mentors & Role Models: Personal Parallels

• Marcus, Antoninus, and Junod’s Own Life:
  Ryan points out that Marcus’ gratitude to his adoptive father Antoninus parallels Junod’s admiration for Fred Rogers, who inspired Junod’s famous magazine profile.

  • [11:18] Ryan Holiday: “The dominant entity in the acknowledgments is ... Antoninus ... if you get lucky enough to come in the orbit of an incredible person and you decide to listen, it can really heal a lot of wounds and get your compass dialed in.”

• Book Title Origins:
  Junod’s memoir In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man is discussed, with Ryan noting how it echoes ancient themes.

  • [12:00] Tom Junod: “Interesting that you say the title, because a lot of people know that it comes from the first line of the first song of the first Let’s Heaven album. However, the people who don’t know that tend to think it’s from antiquity. They think, oh my God, is that Homer?”

6. The Enduring Power of Writing for Oneself

• Joan Didion Comparison:
  Ryan brings up how writer Joan Didion’s private notes become enduring texts, linking this to Marcus’ private meditations—art that endures without an intended audience.
  • [13:12] Ryan Holiday: “When I read that, I was like, oh, she can’t write a bad sentence ... if that text had gotten discovered 200 years from now ... they would have been like, this is great ... Here’s Marcus Aurelius writing reminders to himself. His to-do list is an enduring work of philosophy.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [04:45] Tom Junod: “Oh my God, he’s a dude.”
  (On the surprising humanity of Marcus Aurelius)

• [06:18] Tom Junod: “Christianity ... greatest philosophical mistake ... which is hell.”

• [07:18] Tom Junod: “That is the sentence in the book that has stood out to me ... The best revenge is to not be like that.”

• [08:40] Tom Junod: “He feels in certain ways like a modern day advice writer ... self help writer.”

• [10:31] Tom Junod: “It’s given me a language in which to address these things.”

• [12:46] Ryan Holiday: “Just be really raw and vulnerable and specific, and that creates the general ... and then this guy writes something for nobody ... it somehow reaches millions of people for 20 centuries.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:27] Junod begins reflecting on Meditations and its impact
• [06:18] Contrast between Stoicism and Christianity on death and sin
• [07:18] The Marcus Aurelius quote Junod can’t forget: “The best revenge is to not be like that”
• [10:08] Discussion on the modern, direct style of Meditations
• [11:18] Exploration of mentors: Marcus’ Antoninus and Junod’s Fred Rogers
• [12:46] The enduring legacy of writing privately and comparison to Joan Didion

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Conclusion

This episode is a rich meditation on the intersection of philosophy and writing, unpacking why Meditations is such an enduring, deeply personal work. Both guest and host marvel at Marcus Aurelius’ timeless insights, immediate voice, and the way his private notes have provided generations with guidance on how to live—and write—with honesty and meaning.

Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. There's that expression a writer's writer, like somebody whose writing is appreciated by people who appreciate the craft, like people who do it. They know that, look, anyone can enjoy this, but if you really know how stuff works, you appreciate it at a different level. There's certain comedians that are comedians, comedians, writers who are writers, writers, musicians who are musicians. Musicians, right. We joke about how Epictetus is your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher. That's kind of the vibe, right? And Marcus Aurelius and Meditations are that. I mean, Meditations is a very popular philosophy book, but among people who are writers who can appreciate it on a very different level. Tom Junot is a writer's writer, one of the great magazine writers of his generation. Millions of people have read his articles. Not everyone knows who he is, but the people who do know writing know he is one of the best all time. Always manages to get to like the real story beneath the story. Not just as an investigative reporter, which he's really good at, but. But, like on a human level. And then his sentences managed to express that. That's why his. The Falling man, which is about that unidentified victim plunging from the World Trade center, is so deeply moving. That's why his piece on Mr. Rogers was so incredible. He has this new memoir called in the Days of My Youth. I was told what it means to be a man, which is this sort of reckoning with his father. Tom is a senior writer for espn. He's won an Emmy. He's won a Dan Jenkins Medal for excellence in sports writing. He's won two National Magazine Aw. He's won a James Beard Award. I mean, he's just as good as they come. So when he came on the podcast, I really wanted to dive into Meditations. He told me he had been reading it, and I wanted to learn from a writer's writer about the sentences that stayed with him, why they stayed with him, what Marcus meant to him as a writer. So that's what we're going to dive into in today's episode. He's just an incredible writer. Like, when writers read his stuff, they're like, oof, I wish I could do that. Which is actually one of the feelings I had when I read Meditations for the first time. Like, how is he doing that? And the idea that he's writing it to himself. 2,000 years ago. It's just unbelievable. Anyways, I think you'll like this conversation. Do check out Tom's new book he signed copies of. In the days of my Youth, I was told what it means to be a man. And if you haven't read Meditations yet, well, I don't know what you're doing. What are you listening to this podcast for? Go read Meditations as well. We have the leather bound edition in the Daily Stoic store. Grab the Haze edition, which I wrote the forward to, or really any edition. I think the Hayes edition is the translator's translation of Meditations. I think it's the most beautiful one. Let's get into it. One of the things I think the Internet has shown us is that you gotta directly connect with the people that you're trying to reach. You want as few intermediaries and as few sort of artificial intelligence blocks between you and what you're trying to do or what you're trying to say or who you're trying to reach as possible. Right? You want those one on one interactions. And I don't know if you've seen this app, Whatnot, but it's. It's live shopping. So sellers have direct access to their customers in real time, where people are seeing your face and not a website, not a logo. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies. People who sell those things are building real thriving businesses on whatnot. Anyone can sell, whether your business is big or small, just starting. And people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. Because you're not just listing products, you're building a real direct connection with buyers across Whatnot. The number of sellers making over $1 million a year has doubled. That means it's not just a side hustle, but a real path to building something that lasts. Just search Whatnot. W H a T N O t in the App store, download it and you can start selling and buying right away.

[Tom Junod]

I'm ready. You got me. Totally ready. Cause I went and I read this past week, I read the Meditations.

[Ryan Holiday]

Oh, really? What'd you think?

[Tom Junod]

I was really knocked out by it.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Junod]

And I'm knocked out by it on a couple of different levels. Do you want to get into those?

[Ryan Holiday]

Tell me, do you want to get into those levels? I have questions I want to ask you, but I want to hear this more.

[Tom Junod]

Well, so you know, number one, you go. I had the same feeling reading Marcus Aurelius that I did like when I first read When I first read Samuel Pepys, which is like, oh my God, he's a dude. I mean.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, a glimpse into humanity through the century.

[Tom Junod]

And so he lived a long, long time ago. But his concerns are not very different from our concerns.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Tom Junod]

Okay, so that's one thing.

[Ryan Holiday]

There is that thing, a time travel element.

[Tom Junod]

A time travel element to it. You see yourself in there in a way that you don't see yourself, let's say in the New Testament or certainly

[Ryan Holiday]

or even in Aristotle. You're just like, this is smart and I get it. But you seem like a person wearing a toga that I don't understand.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah, and he's talking. And he's talking to you.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes, yes.

[Tom Junod]

I mean, he's talking to himself. The book is I think probably addressed to himself. But he's talking to you.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Tom Junod]

And he's talking to you and he's making sense. And so here's the other thing that I went towards. So he is talking about, he's talking about death and he's talking about how to live as a human in the face of death. In the years where Christianity is being developed and coming up with a very, very different answer. So Aurelius is basically saying, okay, so death is simply a fact of life. And to accept that changes, changes everything. It's natural and it's part of the natural. It's part of the natural world.

[Ryan Holiday]

It's no less natural than birth and

[Tom Junod]

it's part of you. Whereas you have Christianity on the other side saying to me, what is the greatest philosophical mistake in the history of humanity? Which is the wages of sin or death? I think that is a mistake and I think it's actually a deadly mistake. And upon that deadly mistake is premised to me, mankind's worst invention, its worst idea, which is hell.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, so I've said this before, like, because, yeah, Marx, Aurelius and Christianity, it's the same time. Jesus, Seneca, born the same year.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Ryan Holiday]

Both in provinces of the same empire, both die at the hands of the state. I've said, like the Christian argument is like, don't sin or you will go to hell. And I think the Stoic argument is don't sin or you will live in hell. Like it's a somewhat logical argument against excess and cruel. Like when he says the best revenge is to not be like that.

[Tom Junod]

Okay, so that's the argument about this. That sentence, of all the sentences in the book, I've circled it three times. I have stars, I have the page dog eared to it. I mean that is the sentence in the book that has stood out to me, it's going in. I keep like a chapbook and stuff and that goes there. And so I think that the book really gave me some hope. I don't read philosophy that much. I read poetry a lot more than I read philosophy. But both poetry and philosophy give me difficulty in that they don't tell a story usually. I mean, some poetry does obviously, like epic poetry and stuff, but philosophy doesn't tell a story. And so I have trouble with it. Yeah, but Aurelius spoke to me in a way that was really powerful. And now I want to learn more about Seneca for sure.

[Ryan Holiday]

I think Aristotle said both the philosopher and the poet are concerned with wonder. And I think you don't get that when you read ironically, Aristotle or most of the other philosophers. But when you read Marcus Aurelius, it doesn't feel like he's doing philosophy, but he is right by talking about himself. It's similar to Montaigne where he's like, who am I? Why am I here? What's going on? What does this mean? How could I do it differently?

[Tom Junod]

That as philosophy it definitely does not feel like he's doing philosophy, it feels like he's talking to you. And he feels in certain ways like a modern day advice writer. You know, a so called self help writer.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, there's a French philosopher named Pierre Hadot who wrote this book about Marx Realis and meditation, said his argument is that that is doing philosophy. Writing notes to yourself about your temper, about your fear of death, about your anxiety about obnoxious people, reminding yourself of what you believe, oftentimes right after you've just acted in contrary to that belief. That's philosophy, not philosophical discourses where you attempt to explain the universe or to

[Tom Junod]

get at something right or wrong.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes, yes, that's that. Meditations is philosophy for Marcus Aurelius. And its accidental byproduct is that you and I can read it 2,000 years later.

[Tom Junod]

Right. And so I was really happy to read it because I'm trying to figure out like what's my next book to write. I mean, I'm not saying that I'm going to like do my own meditations. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that it basically broadened possibilities for me. And that was a really great gift. So I appreciate that.

[Ryan Holiday]

To you as a great writer, I would be curious what you thought of it as a text. Like put the philosophical contents aside, how did you take it stylistically? I thought it was.

[Tom Junod]

I thought it Was. It was really, really well done and astoundingly modern.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. Especially given that it wasn't for an audience.

[Tom Junod]

Right. Astoundingly. And I think perhaps it's because it wasn't for an audience that it. It still stands up all these years. He's. He's not. He's not on a stage.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Junod]

And I gotta say that, that, you know, reading Marcus Aurelius over the last week, sort of like a new kind of self talk, it's given me a language in which to address these things. And I'm not bullshitting you on that.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, in Marcus's life, he loses his father very young, and then he comes under the sway of a monster, Hadrian, who's like. Although a very capable emperor, a killer, like, not exactly a sadist, but a person who you would expect would be attracted to absolute power. And so he kind of has this. Well, I don't want to be like him. And if you notice, he almost never appears in Meditations. He's not in the list of acknowledgments

[Tom Junod]

that start the book. Right.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. But the dominant entity in the acknowledgments is not his mother, who he clearly loved. It's this stepfather, Antoninus, who you might have predicted they'd be at odds with each other because they're not related and they're jockeying for power and they're in this forced, arranged kind of marriage. I mean, in the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. That could come from that passage of Marcus Rios talking about Antonitis. And you just see, like, oh, if you get lucky enough to come in the orbit of an incredible person and you decide to listen, it can really heal a lot of wounds and get your compass dialed in. It's a pretty remarkable relationship they have.

[Tom Junod]

And I think that Fred Rogers was definitely that for me. Interesting that you say the title, because a lot of people know that it comes from the first line of the first song of the first let's Heaven album. However, the people who don't know that tend to think it's from antiquity. They think, oh, my God, is that Homer?

[Ryan Holiday]

It seems like it could be.

[Tom Junod]

And you feel that a lot of times when you read the Ancients, they are on a stage. And the fact that he's sitting either in his bedroom or in a camp tent or whatever doing this is, I think what lends it its immediacy. And so that's the thing that I liked about it stylistically, was that there's a certain immediacy to it.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, it's. I mean, you get that advice about, like, you know, just be really raw and vulnerable and specific, and that creates the general. And you don't really believe it. And then this guy writes something for nobody.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Ryan Holiday]

And it somehow reaches millions of people for 20 centuries. It's kind of like the proof. I thought about that. Did you read the Joan Didion book that came out? The. The Notes to John?

[Tom Junod]

I have not read the whole thing. I read the. I read the excerpts that came out when I have the book, but I haven't. I haven't read.

[Ryan Holiday]

By the way, this is. This was her table. Didn't I tell you this?

[Tom Junod]

No.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, this is the table. She. She could have written some of those notes, like at this table, but the chairs too.

[Tom Junod]

Dang.

[Ryan Holiday]

When I read that, I was like, oh, she can't write a bad sentence. Like. Like she was writing for her husband. Like she was writing notes from therapy for her husband. And if that text had gotten discovered 200 years from now and someone wrongly interpreted it as an epistolary novel, they would have been like, this is great. You know what I mean? Like, it somehow. It's like she's so good at what she does that even when she's jotting notes down from a therapy session to her husband, it's good. And I felt like. Here's Marx Realis writing reminders to himself. His to do list is an enduring work of philosophy. It was pretty incredible.

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