Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“For I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which freedom a happy life depends.”
- Source
- Tusculan Disputations
- Date
- c. 45 BCE
- Local voice
- Dialogue speaker · M. (Cicero’s dialogue persona)
Meaning of “For I now call a freedom from anxiety…”
Cicero treats inner security as freedom from destabilizing anxiety, making mental steadiness an important condition of a genuinely happy and self-directed life.
Where does it come from?
Tusculan Disputations, Book V, section XIV, represented by Project Gutenberg #14988. Cicero defines security parenthetically as freedom from anxiety while arguing that a happy life must rest on stable goods and virtue rather than vulnerable externals. It remains ancient philosophical psychology mediated by translation, not modern clinical anxiety-treatment evidence.
Why the local voice matters
Tusculan Disputations, Book V. The public-domain dialogue marks the principal teaching voice as “M.”; this sentence occurs in M.’s sustained argument that virtue is sufficient for happiness.
