Q0494

Seneca

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

You must change your mind, not the sky.
Thinker Seneca
School Stoicism
Source Moral Letters 28
Theme Mind
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Moral Letters 28, 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 mind, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Seneca'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: Seneca. (n.d.). You must change your mind, not the sky. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0494

MLA: Seneca. “You must change your mind, not the sky..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0494.

Chicago: Seneca. “You must change your mind, not the sky..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0494.

Same thinker

More from Seneca

  1. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  2. Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
  3. There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
  4. All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
  5. If you wish to be loved, love.

All quotations by Seneca

Same theme

More on mind

  1. Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
  2. Envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.
  3. Mind precedes all mental states; mind is their chief; they are mind-made.
  4. Give rise to a mind that abides nowhere.
  5. Mind is principle. Are there affairs or principles outside the mind?

Browse the mind theme