Diogenes

I was born in Sinope on the Black Sea. My father, Hicesias, handled coin; a stain of debased silver clung to our name. At Delphi I heard, 'deface the currency.' I took it not as metalwork but as a charge against custom, the city's stamp upon life. Driven out—or walking out—I came to Athens and kept to Antisthenes, a student of Socrates. I pushed his austerity to the brink.

I chose poverty as practice. Autarkeia—being enough for oneself—makes a man light. Anaideia—shamelessness toward convention—frees the voice. I begged for what nature did not give, slept in a pithos by the Agora, trained my body with cold and hunger, and used satire as a whetstone. With parrhesia I cut at pretension, greed, and the lies men tell to themselves.

By daylight I carried a lamp, saying I sought a human being. I called myself a kosmopolites, citizen of the world, not captive of any single law. When Plato set out his abstractions, I answered with earth, bone, and the sight of daily need. Virtue, I said, is known in deeds, not in decorations.

Pirates took me; in Corinth I was sold to Xeniades and made tutor in his house. I said I was fit to rule men, having learned to rule hunger and fear. When Alexander the Macedonian offered a favor as I warmed myself, I asked him only to stand out of my sunlight.