Diogenes Quotes

We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.

Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.

Time is the most valuable thing that a man can spend.

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

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' Said [author:Diogenes|3213618, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king".

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

I am a citizen of the world.

A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils." Diogenes replied, "But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus.

But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.

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.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

Blushing is the color of virtue.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.

We are more curious about the meaning of dreams than about things we see when awake.

The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.

Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

No man is hurt but by himself

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.

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.

What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.

Every age, and especially our own, stands in need of a Diogenes; but the difficulty is in finding men who have the courage to be one, and men who have the patience to endure one.

I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels.

One day a man invited him into a richly furnished house, saying 'be careful not to spit on the floor.' Diogenes, who needed to spit, spat in his face, exclaiming that it was the only dirty place he could find where spitting was permitted.

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?

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.

Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.

The only way to gall and fret effectively is for yourself to be a good and honest man.

Step out of my sunlight.

Why not whip the teacher when the student misbehaves?

If I could not be alexander I would be Diogenes

Man is the most intelligent of animals -- and the most silly.

Behold! I've brought you a man.

Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance and shimmy, and you've got an audience!

What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants?

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school, lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, ‘Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.

Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he lay dying in a foreign land, "The descent to hell is the same from every place.

Diogenes carried a bowl with him for years, but one day saw a man drinking from his cupped palm and declared, ‘I have been a fool, burdened all these years by the weight of a bowl when a perfectly good vessel lay at the end of my wrist.

Remember that you must behave as at a banquet. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand, and take a moderate share. Does it pass you? Do not stop it. Is it not come yet? Do not yearn in desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. So with regard to children , wife, office, riches; and you will some time or other be worthy to feast with the gods. And if you do not so much as take the things which are set before you, but are able even to forego them, then you will not only be worthy to feast with the gods, but to rule with them also. For, by thus doing, Diogenes and Heraclitus, and others like them, deservedly became divine, and were so recognized.

He found Pendergast's cool gaze on him, and he fidgeted. He'd forgotten about those eyes. They made you feel like you had just been stripped of your secrets.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

When Diogenes was asked how to live with the truth, he answered: Do as with fyre: do not go so exceadyngely close that it will burn, but do not go so farre away or the clode will reache you.

Cuanto más conozco a la gente, más quiero a mi perro.

If I gained one thing from philosophy is that at the very least, I am well prepared to confront any change in fortune.

Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the proper sphere of government to create and enforce a framework of law that prohibits force and fraud. But it must refrain from specific economic interventions. Government's main economic function is to encourage and preserve a free market. When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: "Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun." It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

No man is hurt but by himself.

The insult dishonors the one who infers it, not the one who receives it.

...he that knows all that Learning ever writ, knows only this--that he knows nothing yet. [Antonius Diogenes, trans. by Zeno Ninis]

Now, when their glances met, they understood one another. The power that lay within both their souls had met, and, as it were, clasped hands. They accepted one another's sacrifice. Hers, mayhap, was the more complete of the two, because for her his absence would mean weary waiting, the dull heartache so terrible to bear.

Tis only in the future you can prove your true worth.

Your conscience troubles you unnecessarily, and you see a deliberate intention in every simple act.

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…

You are a simpleton, Hegesias; you do not choose painted figs, but real ones; and yet you pass over the true training and would apply yourself to written rules

The road to Hades is easiest to travel. ––Diogenes Laertius   Enjoy the trip, because the stay is going to be hell. ––Hades

The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men. He's always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It's six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.

We need to stop the little girl," said Richard "pass me that shotgun.

How miraculous it was, noted Diogenes, that whenever one felt that sort of urge, one could readily masturbate. But conversely how disheartening that one could not simply rub one’s stomach when hungry.

As Diogenes, the famous Cynic, once said, “It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” To want nothing makes one invincible—because nothing lies outside your control.

When he saw the child of some prostitute throw stones at a crowd, Diogenes shouted to him, "Take care that you don't hit your father!

Stand a little less between me and the sun." Diogenes and I.

I had to suppress a smile. Sherlock Holmes once remarked of his brother, Mycroft, that you were as unlikely to find him outside of the Diogenes Club as you were to meet a tramcar coming down a country lane. Like Mycroft, Father had his rails, and he ran on them. Except for church and the occasional short-tempered dash to the train to attend a stamp show, Father seldom, if ever, stuck his nose out-of-doors.

The famed philosopher Diogenes was looking intently at a large collection of human bones piled one upon another. Alexander the Great stood nearby and became curious about what Diogenes was doing. When he asked the old man what he was doing, the rely was, 'I am searching for the bones of your father, but I cannot seem to distinguish them from those of the slaves.' Alexander got the point. All are equal in death.

Sleep is an unfortunate biological requirement that both wastes time and leaves one vulnerable.

Thales was asked what was very difficult; he said: To know one's self.

The tired ox treads with a firmer step

Thales said there was no difference between life and death. "Why, then," said someone to him, "do not you die?" "Because," said he, "it does make no difference.

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless. Thus Diogenes, who pottered about by himself, rolling his tub and turning up his nose at the great Alexander, considering us as flies or bags of wind, was really a sharper and more stinging judge, to my taste, than Timon, who was surnamed the hater of men. For what we hate we take seriously. Timon wished us ill, passionately desired our ruin, shunned association with us as dangerous, as with wicked men depraved by nature. Diogenes esteemed us so little that contact with us could neither disturb him nor affect him, and avoided our company, not through fear of association with us, but through disdain of it; he considered us incapable of doing either good or evil.... Our own peculiar condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.

The twentieth century showed us the evil face of physics. This century will show us the evil face of biology.

A vine bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.

Since then her life had been peaceful and happy. She had allowed herself to be worshipped by that strangely captivating lover of hers, whose passionately willful temperament, tempered by that persistent, sunny gaiety, she had up to now only half understood.

The great breakthrough of our age is supposed to be that we measure success by happiness, admiring a man for how much he enjoyed his life, rather than how much wealth or fame he hoarded, that old race with no finish line. Diogenes with his barrel and his sunlight lived every hour of his life content, while Alexander fought and bled, mourned friends, faced enemies, and died unsatisfied. Diogenes is greater. Or does that past-tainted inner part of you—the part that still parses ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘he’ and ‘she’—still think that happiness alone is not achievement without legacy? Diogenes has a legacy. Diogenes ruled nothing, wrote nothing, taught nothing except by the example of his life to passersby, but, so impressed were those bypassers, that, after the better part of three millennia, we still know this about him.

Diogenes the Cynic was an ascetic by choice. He rejected his family's bourgeois status, got himself exiled from his native city, and went about in a threadbare cloak with only the barest possessions, a bag for his crust of bread and a cup for scooping water from fountains. When one day he saw a boy drinking from his hands, he smashed the cup, disgusted by his own love of luxury.

And at last, becoming a complete misanthrope, he used to live, spending his time in walking about the mountains; feeding on grasses and plants, and in consequence of these habits, he was attacked by the dropsy, and so then he returned to the city, and asked the physicians, in a riddle, whether they were able to produce a drought after wet weather. And as they did not understand him, he shut himself up in a stable for oxen, and covered himself with cow-dung, hoping to cause the wet to evaporate from him, by the warmth that this produced. And as he did himself no go good in this way, he died, having lived seventy years;

Anna imagines Antonius Diogenes, whoever he was, setting knife to quill, quill to ink, ink to scroll, placing one more barricade in front of Aethon, stretching time for another purpose: to detain his niece in the living world for a little longer.

They accuse me--Me--the present writer of The present poem--of--I know not what,-- A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human power and virtue, and all that; And this they say in language rather rough. Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than has been said in Dante's Verse, and by Solomon and by Cervantes; By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault; By Fenelon, by Luther and by Plato; By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau, Who knew this life was not worth a potato. 'Tis not their fault, nor mine, if this be so-- For my part, I pretend not to be Cato, Nor even Diogenes.--We live and die, But which is best, you know no more than I.

When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

Of what am I guilty," once exclaimed Antisthenes, "that I should be praised?

Die schönste Sache in der Welt ist die Redefreiheit.

Gorčina života istjera me iz svijeta, gorčina života napunja mi dušu, al' ta gorčina pribavi meni, pustinjaku, i mira. Zemlja nam je veliko pozorište gdje ljudi žalosne i smiješne uloge predstavljaju, ja se omotah svojom savjesti kao kabanicom pa gledam vaše komedije i tragedije...

Hers was the perfect love that dwells on the other's happiness, and not on its own. She knew that, though for the time being he would find bliss and oblivion in her arms, he would soon repine in inactivity whilst others fought for that which he held sublime.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation. Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers.

While dead men tell no tales, their corpses often speak volumes.

Human beings are disgustingly predictable, and this is as true of psychopaths as it is of grandmothers.

He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest.

She had seen them in turmoil all round her--love, hatred, vengeance, treachery--she herself practically the pivot around which they raged. Out of the deadly strife she had emerged pure, happy in the arms of the man whom her wondrous adventures as much as his brilliant personality had taught her to love.

It is said that when Alexander heard that the philosopher Diogenes was the smartest person in the world, he decided he must meet the man. So he went to Corinth, where Diogenes was contemplating his theories as he lay in the sun. Alexander stood over him and said, “I am Alexander, conqueror of worlds; put forward your request and it shall be done.” Diogenes squinted up at him, shook his head, and said, “Just get out of my light.

I'll put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book—"Honesty is the Best Policy"? That's it. I'm working honesty for a graft. I'm the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have my address inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but it's a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.

It's both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book and mingle with the great of the earth, counsel with the wise of all time, look into unlived days with prophets. Youth will delight in the heroic figures of Homer; or more modern, will thrill to the silent courage of Florence Nightingale on the battlefield...The power of Cicero's oratory may awaken new ambitions in the middle age, or the absurdity of Don Quixote riding mightily against a windmill may make your own pretentiousness seem ridiculous; if you think the world is against you, get the satisfaction of walking the streets of Athens with Diogenes, lantern in hand in broad daylight in search of an honest man...From the reading of 'good books' there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way. It is not enough to read newspapers...But to become acquainted with real nobility as walks the pages of history and science and literature is to strengthen character and develop life in its finer meanings.

Science Class Would you invent some irrational explanation for we lost souls that the glaciers aren’t really melting at all, that they are and will remain just as they always have been? Some rationale that claims the whole climate change scenario is really just a satanic plot, concocted by liberal secular humanists to trick the world into thinking that the glaciers have been melting for twice as long as the Bible says the Earth has been around.

In the first case it emerges that the evidence that might refute a theory can often be unearthed only with the help of an incompatible alternative: the advice (which goes back to Newton and which is still popular today) to use alternatives only when refutations have already discredited the orthodox theory puts the cart before the horse. Also, some of the most important formal properties of a theory are found by contrast, and not by analysis. A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. He must compare ideas with other ideas rather than with 'experience' and he must try to improve rather than discard the views that have failed in the competition. Proceeding in this way he will retain the theories of man and cosmos that are found in Genesis, or in the Pimander, he will elaborate them and use them to measure the success of evolution and other 'modern' views. He may then discover that the theory of evolution is not as good as is generally assumed and that it must be supplemented, or entirely replaced, by an improved version of Genesis. Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others in greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness. Nothing is ever settled, no view can ever be omitted from a comprehensive account. Plutarch or Diogenes Laertius, and not Dirac or von Neumann, are the models for presenting a knowledge of this kind in which the history of a science becomes an inseparable part of the science itself - it is essential for its further development as well as for giving content to the theories it contains at any particular moment. Experts and laymen, professionals and dilettani, truth-freaks and liars - they all are invited to participate in the contest and to make their contribution to the enrichment of our culture. The task of the scientist, however, is no longer 'to search for the truth', or 'to praise god', or 'to synthesize observations', or 'to improve predictions'. These are but side effects of an activity to which his attention is now mainly directed and which is 'to make the weaker case the stronger' as the sophists said, and thereby to sustain the motion of the whole.

Zekice bir kitap yazmışsın, Bon-Bon,” diye devam etti Majesteleri, dostumuzun omzuna, o verilen emri tam anlamıyla yerine getirdikten sonra bardağını bırakırken hafifçe, bilgiç bir tavırla vurarak. “Kesinlikle zekice bir kitap. Tam benim sevdiğim türden bir eser. Ancak özdeğe ilişkin tasarımın geliştirilebilir ve fikirlerinin pek çoğu bana Aristoteles’i anımsatıyor. O filozof en yakın tanıdıklarımdan biriydi. Onu hem korkunç huysuzluğundan, hem de pot kırmak gibi eğlenceli bir yönünden dolayı severdim. Bütün o yazdıkları arasında tek bir somut gerçek var ki, onun ipucunu da kendisinin absürdlüğünü sevdiğim için ben verdim. Pierre Bon-Bon, hangi yüce ahlâki gerçekten bahsettiğimi biliyorsun sanırım, değil mi?” “Bildiğimi söyleyemem –” “Evet! – Aristoteles’e insanların hapşırırken gereksiz fikirleri burunlarından dışarı attığını söyleyen bendim.” “Bu –hık!– gerçekten de doğru,” dedi metafizikçi, kendisine bir bardak daha Mousseux koyarken ve ziyaretçisinin parmaklarına enfiye kutusunu sunarken. “Platon’a da,” diye devam etti Majesteleri, enfiye kutusunu ve içerdiği iltifatı alçakgönüllülükle geri çevirerek, “Platon’a da bir zamanlar arkadaşça hisler beslemiştim. Platon’la tanıştın mı Bon-Bon? – Ah! Hayır, binlerce kez özür dilerim. Benimle bir gün Atina’da, Parthenon’da karşılaştı ve bana bir fikirden bunaldığını söyledi. Ona ο νους εδτιv αυλος‘yu* yazmasını önerdim. Bunu yapacağını söyleyip eve gitti, ben de piramitlere çıktım. Ama vicdanım beni bir arkadaşa bile olsa birine gerçeği söylediğim için kınadı ve apar topar Atina’ya geri dönüp ‘αυλος’yu yazarken filozofun sandalyesinin arkasında durdum. Kağıda parmağımla dokunarak ters çevirdim. Böylece cümle şimdi ‘ο νους εδτιv αυγος’** olarak okunuyor ve gördüğün gibi, metafiziğinin temel doktrini.” “Hiç Roma’da bulundunuz mu?” diye sordu restaurateur, ikinci Mousseux şişesini bitirdikten sonra dolaptan büyük bir şişe Chambertin alırken. “Sadece bir kez, sevgili Bon-Bon, sadece bir kez. Bir ara” –dedi Şeytan, sanki bir kitaptan okurcasına– “bir ara beş yıllık bir anarşi dönemi olmuştu ve o sırada bütün memurlarından yoksun kalan cumhuriyetin halkın seçtiklerinden başka yargıcı yoktu. Bunlar da yasal idari yetkiye sahip değildi – o zaman, Mösyö Bon-Bon – yalnızca o zaman Roma’daydım ve bu yüzden onun felsefesine ilişkin dünyevi bir tanıdığım yok.” “Epicurus hakkında ne –hık!– ne düşünüyorsunuz?” “Kimin hakkında?” dedi şeytan şaşkınlıkla, “Epicurus’ta kusur bulmak istiyor olamazsın! Epicurus hakkında ne düşünüyormuşum! Beni mi kastediyorsunuz bayım? – Epicurus benim. Diogenes Laertes tarafından adı anılan üç yüz bilimsel incelemenin herbirini yazan filozof benim.” * Ruh bir flüttür. ** Ruh parlak bir ışıktır.