Diogenes Quotes

You don't need money to be free. You can just say if you don't need stuff, you're always free.

Very early on in life, I decided the hell with it: material things weren't for me. Christmas would come, and other kids would have all these presents, and it wouldn't bother me a bit.

Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.

I am totally unattached to material items.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.

The more you learn to live without, the more you'll have to live with.

The older I get, the less I need. I wear the same jean shorts for the whole week. I'm not running to the store to get the latest bag.

I would much rather be asked, why I do not have one, than why I do have one.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it. - Karla

In my life, what I want and what I need are exactly the same. Anything in excess of needs is burdensome to me. You couldn't give me anything I don't need. I am penniless, but have difficulty remaining so. Several of my well meaning, well-to-do friends have offered me large sums of money, which I of course refused.

When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

True security lies not in the things one has, but in the things one can do without.

On being asked by someone how he could become famous, Diogenes responded: 'By worrying as little as possible about fame

Diogenes carried a bowl with him for years, but one day saw a man drinking from his cupped palm and declared, ‘I have been a fool, burdened all these years by the weight of a bowl when a perfectly good vessel lay at the end of my wrist.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

I'm barely at home enough to enjoy the simple lifestyle that I want to live.

I enjoyed my life when I had nothing... and kinda like the idea of just being happy with me.

O ye gods, grant unto me to have little and to want nothing.

When I look around, I begin to understand what Socrates meant when he said, 'How much there is in the world I do not want.'

The American dream is a crock. Stop wanting everything. Everyone should wear jeans and have three T-shirts, eat rice and beans.

To grow up under really simple circumstances, and to understand that certain things were ornamental... that made an impression on me as a child and is something I use.