How do I stop caring what other people think?

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

You won't stop, and I'd distrust anyone who claimed to. I dined for years under Nero's eye, and every glance counted. But sort the opinions. Whose do you actually weigh? Name three people whose judgment you would trust with your life. The rest is the noise of the bath-house: loud, and no one's verdict. Tonight, write those three names down. Before your next act, ask only whether they would approve.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Stop? You will not, and should not wish it; the hermit who needs no one's eyes has merely made a crowd of his own head. Ask instead whose opinions you have trusted, and why. A few you would walk uphill for. The rest are a herd's murmur you mistake for weather. I wrote books almost nobody bought. I still cared. I chose my judges.

Marcus Aurelius

Do not try to stop. You will fail, and call the failing weakness. Sort it instead. Their opinion is a fact about their mind, not yours. Ask whether the man judging you has earned a place in your judgement. I held the Senate's praise and Cassius's hatred alike as weather. Then ask only: was the act right? Do that act tomorrow. Let them think what they think.

Søren Kierkegaard

You will not stop; you will only change whose opinion has the last word. I walked Copenhagen daily, and when The Corsair drew me as a thin-legged oddity, the whole street laughed, and I minded terribly. The crowd was never the real trouble. The trouble was that I wanted its applause and God's verdict at once. Either you answer to the many, or to one. Which gaze do you cannot bear to lose?

Michel de Montaigne

I never managed it, and I have stopped believing the men who claim to. In my tower I painted sentences on the beams, yet when a neighbour passed my gate I still wondered what he thought of my hat. What helped a little was shrinking the audience: most people are busy with their own hats. Keep a few judges whom you honour, and let the rest chatter, as the geese do.

Questions people bring, and how Seneca, Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Kierkegaard and Montaigne answer them — each in his own way.

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