Theophrastus
To a man who at a feast was persistently silent, he remarked, "If you are ignorant, you are acting wisely; if you are intelligent, you are behaving foolishly."
Demetrius
It was a saying of his that to friends in prosperity we should go when invited, but to those in misfortune unbidden.
When told that the Athenians had thrown down his statues, he answered, "But not my character, for which they erected them."
Antisthenes
Some one asked him what he gained from philosophy. He replied, "The power to converse with myself."
He advised the Athenians to pass a vote that asses were horses. When they thought that irrational, he said, "But certainly, your generals are not such because they have learned anything, but simply because you have elected them!"
Diogenes
He used to say that when in the course of his life he saw pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the most sensible of animals; but when he saw interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers, and those who paid attention to them, and those puffed up by fame or wealth, he believed no creature was sillier than man.