Aristophanes Quotes

Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Open your mind before your mouth

Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.

Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.

A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

One bush, they say, can never hide two thieves.

Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets.

Under every stone lurks a politician.

To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high.

Words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven.

A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.

By words the mind is winged.

You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.

First listen, my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.

No man is really honest; none of us is above the influence of gain.

Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways, are the children of Men.

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true.

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.