Greek comic dramatist (450 B.C. - 388 B.C.)
Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever!
ARISTOPHANES
The Knights
It is right that the good should be happy, that the wicked and the impious on the other hand, should be miserable; that is a truth, I believe, which no one will gainsay.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
Ye Children of Man! whose life is a span,
Protracted with sorrow from day to day,
Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous,
Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!
ARISTOPHANES
The Birds
A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.
ARISTOPHANES
The Knights