Quotes from Aristophanes

Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

A man should be able to stand up under any disaster for his country's good.

When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.

The love of wine is a good man's failing.

A slave is but half a man.

A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.

Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.

If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.

Under every stone lurks a politician.

Open your mind before your mouth

The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.

Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.

Surely you do not believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

It often happens that less depends upon the valor of an army than the skill of the leader.

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

Love is simply the name for the desire and the pursuit of the whole.

Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.

A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.

Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.