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Who really said it

Of all the means to ensure happiness, friendship is the most important

Not Epicurus’s exact words — a modern paraphrase of Principal Doctrine 27 Epicurus 341–270 BCE · Greek philosopher, founder of Epicureanism
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The thought is genuinely Epicurus’s — it compresses Principal Doctrine 27, preserved in Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book X ↗. But this exact one-liner appears in no standard translation: the R. D. Hicks rendering ↗ reads “Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.” The short form is a web-era condensation, not Epicurus’s translated words.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“Of all the means to ensure happiness, friendship is the most important” Adapted from Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 27 (modern paraphrase)

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In context

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Provenance

The genuine maxim behind the paraphrase

Work
Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai), no. 27
Preserved in
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book X.148
Displayed wording
Modern paraphrase — matches no standard translation
Nearest translations
R. D. Hicks (1925); Cyril Bailey (1926)

Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends. Paraphrase vs. translation

Principal Doctrine 27 in R. D. Hicks’s 1925 translation, as presented by the Internet Classics Archive. The popular short form drops “which are procured by wisdom” and “throughout the whole of life,” and swaps “the acquisition of friends” for “friendship.”

Principal Doctrines (Hicks translation) at the Internet Classics Archive

How the wording traces back

The underlying maxim exists in public-domain translations (R. D. Hicks, 1925; Cyril Bailey, 1926), but the exact one-line wording displayed here matches neither — it is an anonymous modern condensation with no identifiable translator or pre-1931 documentation. We therefore assert no copyright status for this specific string.

Fact-check

A real idea, a paraphrased wording

This is not a false attribution of the idea — friendship’s primacy really is Epicurean doctrine. It is a misquote: the popular sentence is a modern rewrite that no published translator wrote.

A modern web-era paraphrase misquote

“Of all the means to ensure happiness, friendship is the most important” compresses Principal Doctrine 27 ↗, cutting “which are procured by wisdom” and “throughout the whole of life” and replacing “the acquisition of friends” with “friendship.” No standard translation reads this way.

Editions that cite it as PD 28 numbering

Most editions, including the Internet Classics Archive ↗, number this doctrine 27; a few sources (e.g. some Wikiquote ↗ listings) number it 28.

The genuine text, per Hicks’s translation ↗ of Principal Doctrine 27, is “Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.”

Context

Why friendship sat at the center of Epicurus’s ethics

For Epicurus, the goal of life was ataraxia — freedom from anxiety — and he argued that secure, trusting friendships were among the surest supports of a tranquil life. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗ notes, he “placed an extremely high value on friendship,” even holding that a wise person would suffer for a friend as for themselves.

That is why the sentiment resonates so widely today — it is authentically Epicurean. The friction is only in the words: the crisp modern slogan is easier to share than the fuller ancient maxim, so the paraphrase has largely displaced the translation.

The idea is real Epicurus; the exact sentence is not.

On the Principal Doctrines

The Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai) are forty short maxims summarizing Epicurean ethics. They survive because Diogenes Laertius quoted the whole set in Book X of his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, written centuries after Epicurus’s death.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Friendship Happiness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Principal Doctrines (Hicks translation)classics.mit.edu

Public-domain Hicks rendering; PD 27 in full context
Epicurusplato.stanford.edu

Scholarly overview of Epicurus, his life, and the role of friendship
Epicurusen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotations, including the full Principal Doctrines maxim
Principal Doctrines (Bailey & others)texts.epicureanfriends.com

Bailey’s translation of each maxim, with occasional alternate renderings in footnotes, including Bailey 1926
Epicurusen.wikipedia.org

Biographical background on the philosopher and his school

The true source of the idea

Epicurus of Samos

Epicurus

341–270 BCE · Greek philosopher, founder of Epicureanism

Epicurus (341–270 BCE) was a Greek philosopher who founded his school, the Garden, in Athens around 307/06 BCE. He taught that a tranquil, pleasant life is the highest good, and he placed an exceptionally high value on friendship (philia) as essential to human happiness and security. His writings survive mainly in fragments and in the summaries and maxim-lists preserved by the later biographer Diogenes Laertius.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Principal Doctrines 27

Epicurus. “Principal Doctrines” (Kyriai Doxai), no. 27, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book X.148, trans. R. D. Hicks (Loeb Classical Library, 1925). The popular one-line form is a modern paraphrase.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Of all the means to ensure happiness, friendship is the most important’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/of-all-the-means-to-ensure-happiness-friendship-is-the-most

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