Skip to content

Question

How does Marcus Aurelius advise us to respond to those who wrong us?

A one-line note from Marcus Aurelius's private journal on the only real form of revenge.

Updated

The short answer

Marcus Aurelius's answer is a single line from his private notebook: the best way to avenge yourself is not to become like the wrongdoer. He is not advising passivity or forgiveness as such. He is saying that the real damage of an injustice is not what was done to you but what you let it turn you into, and the only fitting response is to keep your own character from being corrupted by it.

Key points

  • Marcus's advice on being wronged is a single line: the best revenge is not becoming like the wrongdoer.
  • This is not a tactic for winning an argument or looking good by comparison, it is a claim about what actually harms you.
  • Marcus elsewhere argues that things like dishonor and pain fall equally on good and bad people, so they cannot themselves be what makes a life good or bad.
  • What can make your life worse is corrupting your own character in response to a wrong, not the wrong itself.
  • The instruction does not rule out seeking correction or justice, it rules out matching wrong with wrong.

The longer answer

Marcus does not tell you to forgive, to turn the other cheek, or to feel nothing. He gives you a single, sharp instruction: do not let the wrong done to you turn you into the kind of person who does wrong. That is the whole of his advice in this line, and its brevity is the point. He is not working out a theory of justice or punishment. He is reminding himself, in the middle of a busy and often thankless public life, what actually counts as losing to another person's bad behavior.

The common misreading treats this as a strategy: stay calm, don't retaliate, and you come out ahead, perhaps even make the wrongdoer look worse by comparison. That reading turns the line into a clever move in a contest you're still trying to win. But Marcus's Stoicism does not treat other people's opinions, or even the outcome of the conflict, as the thing that matters. What matters is your own character, the only thing that is truly up to you. Read this way, the line is not tactical advice about how to get even. It is a claim about what "getting even" even means. If someone treats you unjustly and you respond with cruelty, dishonesty, or spite, you have not evened the score. You have joined them. You have taken on the very defect you were wronged by.

This fits with a broader move Marcus makes elsewhere in the Meditations, when he considers what actually makes a life better or worse. He argues that things like pain, dishonor, and mistreatment fall on good and bad people alike, and precisely because they fall on both without discrimination, they cannot be what makes a life good or bad (Meditations 2.11). What does make a life worse is a corrupted character, a mind that has taken on falsehood or malice. So being wronged is not, by itself, an injury to your life in the Stoic sense. Becoming the wrongdoer's twin is.

This does not mean Marcus asks you to be passive. Nothing in the line says you cannot correct the person, remove yourself from their reach, or seek a fair remedy through whatever institutions exist for that. The instruction is narrower and, in a way, harder: whatever you do in response, do not let it corrupt your own faculty of choice. You can pursue justice without becoming vindictive. You can protect yourself without becoming cruel. You can hold someone accountable without lying about them or delighting in their downfall. The line rules out one thing specifically: matching their wrong with a wrong of your own and calling it justice.

Take this seriously and the whole shape of "getting even" changes. You stop asking how to make the other person suffer as you suffered, and you start asking a different question: what response here keeps my own character intact? That is a harder question, because it removes the easy satisfaction of retaliation and replaces it with the slower work of acting well regardless of what was done to you. The next time someone wrongs you and you feel the pull toward payback, use that pull as the test.

Primary passages

The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrong doer.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.6 Read in context

The full weight of Marcus's advice sits in this one line from his private notebook.

Important distinctions

Not becoming like them versus doing nothing

Marcus's line is often heard as advice to stay passive, to let wrongdoing go unanswered. It says nothing of the kind. It only rules out one specific response: taking on the wrongdoer's own defect, whether that is cruelty, dishonesty, or spite. You can still correct someone, protect yourself, or pursue a fair remedy. What you cannot do, on this view, is call it justice while lying, gloating, or being cruel in return.

Revenge as strategy versus revenge as character

A shallow reading treats staying calm as a clever move that makes you look better than the wrongdoer. Marcus's Stoicism is not interested in how you look to others. The point is not the comparison, it is what your own faculty of choice becomes. The measure is internal, not a scorecard against the other person.

Objections and replies

This looks like it lets wrongdoers off the hook

If the only thing that matters is not becoming like the wrongdoer, does that mean you should not push for consequences, restitution, or punishment when someone genuinely wrongs you?

Reply

Nothing in the line forbids seeking a remedy. Marcus is narrowing what counts as a legitimate response, not eliminating response altogether. You can hold someone accountable through fair means. The line only rules out responding to injustice with more injustice of your own, such as lying, cruelty, or vindictiveness dressed up as justice.

Doesn't this ask victims to absorb harm quietly

Telling someone who has been wronged to worry about their own character can sound like it puts the burden back on the injured party instead of the wrongdoer.

Reply

Marcus is writing to himself, not laying down a rule for how institutions should treat wrongdoing. His claim is narrower: the wrong done to you does not by itself make your life worse, on his account of what is genuinely good or bad. What would make it worse is if you let it turn you into someone with the same defect. That is a demand on your own choices, not an excuse for the wrongdoer or a reason to stay silent about harm.

Practice this in Stoa

Guided courses in the Stoa app that put this into daily practice.

Related questions

Podcast discussions

Concepts

  • The dichotomy of control You will learn why Epictetus draws a hard line between what is up to us and what is not, and why that line is about identity and value, not stress management.
  • Indifferents: what is neither good nor bad Learn why the Stoics called wealth, health, and even death indifferent, and why that word does not mean unimportant.

Works

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius A Roman emperor's private notebook of Stoic exercises shows what it looks like to practice philosophy under real pressure, not just write about it.

Sources

  1. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Primary text, Stoa library