Alexander the Great comes up to you and says “if I was not me, I wish I were you” and your response is “If I wasn’t myself, I’d still wish to be myself”.
Diogenes was captured by pirates while on voyage to Aegina and sold as a slave … Being asked his trade, he replied that he knew no trade but that of governing men, and that he wished to be sold to a man who needed a master.
Zeno was killed while he was engaged in a plot to overthrow the tyrant Nearchus. This account tells that he was captured, and that he was killed after he refused to give the names of his co-conspirators.[3][8] Before his death, Zeno is said to have asked to whisper the names into Nearchus’s ear, only to bite the ear when Nearchus approached, holding on until he was killed.[3]
My favorite is when he got caught masturbating in public and responded with “If only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly.” Or when Plato was teaching a class and defined a man as a featherless biped, and Diogenes brought a plucked chicken to the class and said “Behold, Plato’s man!”
And the time this dialogue took place during that same meeting…
In another account of the conversation, Alexander found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, “I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”
He’s also the one who told the Emperor to move out of his sunlight.
Man, what a guy.
Alexander the Great comes up to you and says “if I was not me, I wish I were you” and your response is “If I wasn’t myself, I’d still wish to be myself”.
Unfathomably based.
Fucking savage.
Greek philosophers had no chill apparently
Goddamn. Is there a list of Diogenes quotes? I’ve heard a couple but this one was new to me.
My favorite is when he got caught masturbating in public and responded with “If only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly.” Or when Plato was teaching a class and defined a man as a featherless biped, and Diogenes brought a plucked chicken to the class and said “Behold, Plato’s man!”
And the time this dialogue took place during that same meeting…
Diogenes is the GOAT.
He also would masturbate in the middle of the market, and when confronted said “if only hunger could be satisfied by rubbing your belly”
He also lived in a bathtub.