Every Philosopher's Cure for Overthinking

What do you do with a thought you can't stop replaying? Eight philosophers' cures, in their own words, ranked from the one you could try tonight to the one that asks the most of you: Montaigne, Bertrand Russell, Seneca, Descartes, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, the Buddha and Wittgenstein. 0:00 The thought you can't stop replaying 0:35 Montaigne 2:23 Bertrand Russell 4:11 Seneca 6:02 René Descartes 7:50 Marcus Aurelius 9:32 Blaise Pascal 11:41 The Buddha 13:02 Ludwig Wittgenstein 14:42 What all eight have in common Where every quote comes from Michel de Montaigne, "Of Idleness," Essays I.8 (tr. Charles Cotton); the inscription on his library wall (1571) Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), chapter 5, "Fatigue" Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 13 (tr. Richard M. Gummere) René Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637), Part III (tr. John Veitch) Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.36 and 8.47 (tr. George Long) Blaise Pascal, Pensées 139, "Diversion" (public-domain English translation, Project Gutenberg #18269) The Arrow (Sallatha Sutta), Samyutta Nikaya 36.6 (tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sections 123, 133 and 309 (tr. G. E. M. Anscombe) Life and dates: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Image credit: Montaigne's 1571 library inscription, photo by Jacques Bodin, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). All other images are public domain or CC0. Music and sound effects: Epidemic Sound.