To someone who presented ‘Aristippus’ with a riddle and said, “Solve it,” he replied, “Why, fool, do you want to solve it, since even unsolved it gives us trouble?”
He said it was better to be a beggar than to be uneducated; for
the former is in need of money, the latter of humanity. When reviled one day, he withdrew; and when the other man pursued him and asked, “Why do you run away?” he said, “Because you have the right to malign me, while I have the right not to listen.”
When someone said that he always saw philosophers at the doors of rich men, he replied, “Yes, and doctors at doors of sick people; but no one would prefer being sick to being a doctor.”