Skip to content

He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of "dog." "It is you who are dogs," cried he, "when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast."

— Diogenes of Sinope

Another quote →

Topics

Pets

More quotes by Diogenes of Sinope

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for a human."

Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world."

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

All Diogenes of Sinope quotes →

You may also like

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Diogenes of Sinope (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.