Diogenes of Sinope Quotes on Virtue
Diogenes of Sinope (c.412–c.323 BC) — the Greek philosopher who lived in conspicuous poverty in Athens and Corinth, sleeping in a wine jar and reportedly carrying a lighted lamp by day in search of an honest man — gave the Cynic tradition its founding personal embodiment of virtue as voluntary self-sufficiency. The principal teaching, transmitted through the anecdotes preserved in Diogenes Laertius and the broader doxographical tradition rather than surviving treatises, treats the conventions of property, status, family, and the polis as the great obstacles to a virtuous life — the philosophical project is the systematic dismantling of these conventions through ostentatiously natural conduct in pursuit of a freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) the conventional life cannot supply. The framework shaped the Stoic tradition through Crates of Thebes and Zeno of Citium and the broader Western reflection on counter-cultural simplicity through the Christian ascetic tradition, Rousseau, and Thoreau.
Quotes
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“I am looking for an honest man.”
He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for a human . -
Attributed to Diogenes of Sinope:
“It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.”
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Attributed to Diogenes of Sinope:
“He has the most who is most content with the least.”
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Attributed to Diogenes of Sinope:
“Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?”
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“Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip , but Diogenes when he himself pleases.”
Plutarch , On Exile , 12 ( Moralia , 604D) -
“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.”
Plutarch , Moralia , 74C -
“Being asked where in Greece he saw good men , he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta.”
Diogenes Laërtius , vi. 27 -
“Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.”
Quoted by Stobaeus | Stobaeus , iv. 31c. 88 -
“Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.”
Quoted by Stobaeus | Stobaeus , iv. 32a. 19