Diogenes of Sinope Quotes on Freedom

Diogenes of Sinope, a founder of the Cynic school, made personal freedom the whole point of his deliberately scandalous way of life, and the quotes gathered here present it. Diogenes practised a radical self-sufficiency that owed nothing to wealth, status, or even his own city, declaring himself instead a citizen of the world. His freedom was inward and unconquerable: in the famous anecdote, marked here as attributed, he asks Alexander the Great only to stand a little less between him and the sun, wanting nothing the powerful could give. Even sold into slavery, the stories report, Diogenes claimed mastery, telling the man who bought him to obey orders and naming his own proficiency as ruling people. Drawn from the anecdotes preserved by Diogenes Laertius, these passages present freedom as independence from every external need and convention.