Plato defined man thus: “Man is a two-footed, featherless animal,” and was much praised for the definition; so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into his school, and said, “This is Plato’s man.” On which account this addition was made to the definition, “With broad flat nails.”
A man once asked him what was the proper time for supper, and he made answer, “If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.”
When he was at Megara he saw some sheep carefully covered over with skins, and the children running about naked; and so he said, “It is better at Megara to be a man’s ram, than his son.”
A man once struck him with a beam, and then said, “Take care.” “What,” said he, “are you going to strike me again?”
He used to say that the demagogues were the servants of the people; and garlands the blossoms of glory.
Having lighted a candle in the day time, he said, “I am looking for a man.”
On one occasion he stood under a fountain, and as the bystanders were pitying him, Plato, who was present, said to them, “If you wish really to show your pity for him, come away;” intimating that he was only acting thus out of a desire for notoriety.
Once, when a man had struck him with his fist, he said, “O Hercules, what a strange thing that I should be walking about with a helmet on without knowing it!”
When Midias struck him with his fist and said, “There are three thousand drachmas for you;” the next day Diogenes took the cestus of a boxer and beat him soundly, and said, “There are three thousand drachmas for you.”6