Top 90 Aristophanes Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Open your mind before your mouth.”

— Aristophanes

2. “Today things are better than yesterday.”

— Aristophanes

3. “Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever.”

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

5. “You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.”

— Aristophanes

6. “High thoughts must have high language.”

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

8. “By words the mind is winged.”

— Aristophanes

9. “Even if you persuade me, you won’t persuade me.”

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

11. “Comedy is allied to justice.”

— Aristophanes

12. “Old age is second childhood.”

— Aristophanes

13. “There is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold!”

— Aristophanes

14. “A fox is subtlety itself.”

— Aristophanes

15. “Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.”

— Aristophanes

16. “Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!”

— Aristophanes

17. “Evil events from evil causes spring, And what you suffer flows from what you’ve done.”

— Aristophanes

18. “When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.”

— Aristophanes

19. “The love of wine is a good man’s failing.”

— Aristophanes

20. “Does it seem that everything is extravagance in the world, or rather madness, when you watch the way things go? A crowd of rogues enjoy blessings they have won by sheer injustice, while more honest folks are miserable and die of hunger.”

— Aristophanes

21. “Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.”

— Aristophanes

22. “Thou shouldst not decide until thou hast heard what both have to say.”

— Aristophanes

23. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.”

— Aristophanes

24. “Love is merely the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.”

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

26. “Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.”

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

28. “A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.”

— Aristophanes

29. “Mix and knead together all the state business as you do for your sausages. To win the people, always cook them some savory that pleases them.”

— Aristophanes

30. “It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.”

— Aristophanes

31. “Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.”

— Aristophanes

32. “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

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

— Aristophanes

34. “One bush, they say, can never hide two thieves.”

— Aristophanes

35. “The man credited with inventing the comma, colon, and full stop punctuation marks was a librarian of Alexandria called Aristophanes.”

— Aristophanes

36. “How can I study from below, that which is above?”

— Aristophanes

37. “LYSISTRATA May gentle Love and the sweet Cyprian Queen shower seductive charms on our bosoms and all our person. If only we may stir so amorous a feeling among the men that they stand firm as sticks, we shall indeed deserve the name of peace-makers among the Greeks.”

— Aristophanes

38. “There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.”

— Aristophanes

39. “The wise learn many things from their enemies.”

— Aristophanes

40. “The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.”

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

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

— Aristophanes

44. “A truce to idle phrases!”

— Aristophanes

45. “The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.”

— Aristophanes

46. “But how should women perform so wise and glorious an achievement, we women who dwell in the retirement of the household, clad in diaphanous garments of yellow silk and long flowing gowns, decked out with flowers and shod with dainty little slippers?”

— Aristophanes

47. “That is what we do each time we see someone who falls in love with evil strategies, until we hurl him into misery, so he may learn to fear the Gods.”

— Aristophanes

48. “Wealth – the most excellent of all gods.”

— Aristophanes

49. “I would treat her like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; I would take off her mask and then kiss her pretty face.”

— Aristophanes

50. “Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master, At which the audience never fail to laugh?”

— Aristophanes