Q0102

Marcus Aurelius

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.
Thinker Marcus Aurelius
School Stoicism
Source Meditations VI.54
Theme Community
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Meditations VI.54, within the tradition of Stoicism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of community, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Marcus Aurelius's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Marcus Aurelius. (n.d.). What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0102

MLA: Marcus Aurelius. “What is not good for the hive is….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0102.

Chicago: Marcus Aurelius. “What is not good for the hive is….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0102.

Same thinker

More from Marcus Aurelius

  1. Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.
  2. The universe is change; life is opinion.
  3. Begin the morning by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant…
  4. Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
  5. If you are distressed by anything external, it is not the thing itself that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.

All quotations by Marcus Aurelius

Same theme

More on community

  1. Man is by nature a political animal.
  2. It is perhaps also strange to make the happy person a solitary.
  3. Two loves have made two cities.
  4. To find a form of association…by which each, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself, and remains as free as before.
  5. The many become one, and are increased by one.

Browse the community theme