Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are pleased to think.”
- Source
- The Wisdom of Life
- Date
- 1851
- English wording
- T. Bailey Saunders — Translator · from German
Meaning of “Otherwise, a man is the slave of what…”
Dependence on approval can turn other people’s judgments into a form of control; self-respect requires allowing outside opinion to inform rather than govern one’s sense of worth.
Where does it come from?
The Wisdom of Life; the sentence appears in Schopenhauer’s criticism of giving excessive weight to reputation and social opinion.
