Diogenes of Sinope Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

Diogenes of Sinope
When asked by Alexander if he wanted anything:
Stand a little out of my sun.

Diogenes of Sinope
Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.

Diogenes of Sinope
Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.

Diogenes of Sinope
When people laughed at him because he walked backward beneath the portico, he said to them: "Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?"

Diogenes of Sinope
If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

Diogenes of Sinope
On reaching Athens he fell in with Antisthenes. Being repulsed by him, because he never welcomed pupils, by sheer persistence Diogenes wore him out. Once when he stretched out his staff against him, the pupil offered his head with the words, Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you've something to say.

Diogenes of Sinope
Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside.

Diogenes of Sinope
To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can."

Diogenes of Sinope
He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for a human."

Diogenes of Sinope
The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.

Diogenes of Sinope
One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, "A child has beaten me in plainness of living."

Diogenes of Sinope
He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, "To get practice in being refused."

Diogenes of Sinope
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze.

Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes the cynic, seeing one of the so-called freedmen pluming himself, while many heartily congratulated him, marveled at the absence of reason and discernment. A man might as well, he said, proclaim that one of his servants became a grammarian, a geometrician, or musician, when he has no idea whatever of the art. For as the proclamation cannot make them men of knowledge, so neither can it make them free.

Diogenes of Sinope
To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes at the slave market, he said, "Come, see that you obey orders."

Diogenes of Sinope
Perdiccas threatened to put him to death unless he came to him, "That's nothing wonderful," Diogenes said, "for a beetle or a tarantula would do the same."

Diogenes of Sinope
Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

Diogenes of Sinope
When the slave auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling people."

Diogenes of Sinope
When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home."

Diogenes of Sinope
Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "'Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

Diogenes of Sinope
Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"

Diogenes of Sinope
He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of "dog." "It is you who are dogs," cried he, "when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast."

Diogenes of Sinope
It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.

Diogenes of Sinope
He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practise doing all my life."

Diogenes of Sinope