Quotes from Diogenes

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

He has the most who is most content with the least.

Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves?

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

You will become a teacher of yourself when for the same things that you blame others, you also blame yourself.

Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.

The great thieves lead away the little thief.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.

The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.

There is a false love that will make you something you are not.

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.

Aristotle was once asked what those who tell lies gain by it. Said he - That when they speak truth they are not believed.

Love comes with hunger.

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

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

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

Calumny is only the noise of madmen.

Of a rich man who was mean and niggardly, he said, "That man does hot possess his estate, but his estate possesses him."

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that in itself is philosophy.

I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?