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What Is the Strongest Response to an Insult?

The Death of Socrates, by JL David
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787). Others may scatter the words. Only we can turn them into an insult.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 12 August 2026.

A playwright once mocked the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes before a packed theatre in Athens. ‘Driven by Cleanthes’ folly like dumb herds,’ he declaimed.

Everyone waited for the old philosopher’s response. But Cleanthes neither protested nor replied. He did not even alter his expression. Faced with such composure, the audience turned against the playwright, heckling him off the stage. Later, the playwright came to apologise, but Cleanthes brushed off the incident as too trivial to dwell upon.

What did Cleanthes understand that the rest of us so often forget?

Insults can sting. They can undermine our confidence, poison our relationships, and linger in the mind—sometimes, for years. A cutting remark from a colleague, a sarcastic comment from a friend, a stranger’s contemptuous glance, being left out, ignored, or spoken over—these small slights can accumulate into resentment, anxiety, and self-doubt.

The Stoics did not deny the pain of such experiences. But they did make a remarkable claim: an insult does not exist independently of our response to it. Words are only sounds, gestures only movements. They become insults only when we accept them as such. This is not to deny that people can be malicious or cruel, or, at best, thoughtless. They can. The question is whether we are prepared to hand them authority over our peace of mind.

First, Ask Yourself This

Whenever someone appears to insult us, we should consider three questions.

Is what they are saying true, or partly true?

Do they know us well enough to judge?

And why are they saying it?

If the criticism is fair and comes from someone whose judgement we respect, then it is not really an insult but valuable information. Parents, teachers, trusted friends, and respected colleagues often tell us things that we would rather not hear. Their intention is not to diminish us, but to help us grow.

If, on the other hand, the criticism comes from someone who is ill-informed, malicious, or simply foolish, why should we grant it any weight? We do not feel wounded if a dog growls at us, a naughty child calls us names, or someone beside themselves raves against us. Why should an unreasonable person have any greater power over us?

Either way, offence begins to lose its grip. Often, an ‘insult’ is not really an insult. It is admonition, advice, or just noise.

The Weakest Response

True insult or not, our instinct is to get angry. But anger is the weakest possible response.

It tells the other person that they have succeeded in disturbing us. It suggests that there may be some truth in what they have said. And it unsettles our judgement, making us liable to say or do things that we later regret. As Seneca observed, ‘Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.’

People who habitually insult others are often struggling with frustrations of their own. Their words reveal more about their character than ours. If anything, they deserve our pity rather than our anger.

Answering Back

The perfect put-down is one of life’s great fantasies. Unfortunately, it usually occurs too late. The French have a delightful expression for this: l’esprit de l’escalier—’staircase wit’—because the burning reply only enters our mind when we’re on the way home.

But even when a clever retort is perfectly timed, it is rarely the strongest response. By exchanging insults, we allow the encounter to become a contest on the insulter’s terms. We bring ourselves down to their level while raising them to ours.

Humour, however, is different. When used lightly, it exposes the absurdity of the situation without escalating it. The Roman statesman Cato the Younger was once spat upon by an opponent in court. Wiping his face, he remarked, “I will swear to anyone that people are wrong to say you cannot use your mouth.”

Another strategy is to embrace the criticism. “If you knew me better,” we might reply, “you would find much greater faults than that.” Such responses undermine the insult by depriving it of its oxygen.

The Strongest Response

But humour, too, demands wit, timing, and presence of mind. The strongest response is often the simplest: to ignore the insult altogether.

One day, a boor accidentally struck Cato at the public baths. Upon recognising the senator, the horrified man hurried to apologise.

“I don’t remember being struck,” Cato replied.

The point was not to humiliate the man, but to show that the incident had not disturbed his tranquillity—that, though his body had been struck, his mind had not been touched.

This was also Cleanthes’ secret. He did not suppress his anger. He had no need to. The playwright’s words had remained just that—words—because he had not collaborated in turning them into an insult.

Of course, there are occasions when we should speak up. If someone repeatedly insults us at work, at home, or in any unavoidable relationship, calmly and firmly asserting our boundaries may be the wisest course.

The crucial distinction is between defending our dignity and defending our ego. The first may sometimes be necessary. The second seldom is.

The Insult We Create

An insult begins with another person’s words, but it ends with our judgement.

We cannot control whether people are careless, cruel, arrogant, or simply foolish. Nor should we pretend that hurtful words do not hurt. They can wound, and some wounds take a long time to heal. But we need not add a second injury to the first: the injury of allowing another person’s behaviour to disturb our peace of mind.

The Stoics understood that our freedom lies not in preventing every insult, but in refusing to become its accomplice. We may examine criticism, learn from what is useful, laugh at what is absurd, ignore what is beneath us, and challenge what genuinely crosses a boundary. But we need not hand over our tranquillity to the person who would disturb it.

A barking dog, a naughty child, or someone raving beside themselves may all make noise. But noise is not the same as an insult. It becomes an insult only when we assent to it.

That was Cleanthes’ achievement.

The playwright thought he was insulting a philosopher.

In reality, he was only scattering words into the air.

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Seneca’s timeless advice for dealing with noise. 

Odysseus and the Sirens, by John William Waterhouse. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In my previous post, Hate Noise? You Might Be a Genius, I discussed the relationship between sensitivity to sound and creative thinking. Many great minds, from Kant to Kafka, and Darwin to Proust, are known to have been atrociously sensitive to sound. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in particular wrote an essay, On Noise, in which he linked misophonia [“the hatred of sounds”] with intellect and creativity—an association that modern science seems to be confirming.

There was, however, one singular genius, often mentioned in the same breath as Socrates, who managed to make his peace with noise: Seneca (c. 4 BCE-65 CE), the famous Stoic philosopher and infamous tutor and advisor to the mad emperor Nero. In the end, Nero forced his hapless mentor to commit suicide, which Seneca did unflinchingly according to the model that had been set by Socrates.

If you think that Manhattan is noisy, that is nothing to Ancient Rome, with its criers and hawkers, chariot wheels on uneven roads, and lack of window glass let alone double glazing and other soundproofing. Not even Seneca, who has been described as the first-ever investment banker and might have been the richest man in the Roman Empire, could insulate himself from the hubbub.

In the Letters to Lucilius, which he wrote in a (successful) bid to become immortal in the months leading to his death, Seneca claims to be living in lodgings right over a bathing establishment: “So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing!” He paints a vivid picture of the soundscape and, by extension, of first century Roman life: the grunts of the weightlifter, the slaps and pummelling of the masseur, the splashing of the enthusiast who bombs into the pool, the ceaseless chatter of the hair-plucker who makes his victims yell…

Despite the din, Seneca remains able to read and write, assuring Lucilius that “this racket means no more to me than the sound of waves or falling water.” Still, he recognises that some noises are worse than others. Intermittent noises, he says, are more upsetting than steady ones. Spoken words are more distracting than mere sounds, in that they demand our attention: compared to speech, even the saw-sharpener is easier to bear. Yet Seneca is able to force his mind to concentrate and “keep it from straying to things outside itself.”

More than that, Seneca sees this as a test of his Stoicism, mental fortitude, and even virtue. Ultimately, he reasons, noise only disturbs us insofar as it resonates with our own emotional turmoil. If our mind is still, no amount of noise can unsettle it; but if our mind is angry or fearful, or burning with greed or envy, no amount of silence can still it: “For of what benefit is a quiet quarter or neighbourhood if our emotions are in an uproar?”

In Virgil, as Aeneas flees burning Troy, he says, “I, whom of yore no dart could cause to flee… Now shake at every sound, and fear the air, Both for my child and for the load I bear.”

We tend to associate sleeping with resting. But unless we are able to still our mind by the use of reason, the night merely changes the form of our worries. Real tranquillity, in contrast, “is the state reached by a rational mind when it is at rest.”

For if we have sincerely retired… and have scorned outward attractions, then… no outward thing will distract us; no music of men or of birds can interrupt good thoughts, when they have once become steadfast and sure. The mind which starts at words or at chance sounds is unstable and has not yet withdrawn into itself; it contains within itself an element of anxiety and rooted fear, and this makes one a prey to care… You may therefore be sure that you are at peace with yourself, when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be of flattery or threat.

I think there is a lot of truth in that. When overwhelmed by noise, I find it very helpful to ask myself, “Is my annoyance more to do with me or my prejudices than with the noise itself?” But I would contest that even if we are able to concentrate in a din, our concentration is less profound or complete than it would otherwise have been, and more wearing too.

Seneca readily admits that, having tested ourself, is it simpler to avoid the uproar, or block it out, just as Odysseus blocked his ears and had the Argonauts row faster to get past the sirens. According to lore, the sirens were fated to die if someone ever escaped their singing, and after Odysseus were never again to be seen or heard.