Politics | Pride

FLATTERY
In Ancient Greece, the politically crafty philosopher Aristippus had learned to get along in court by flattering the tyrant Denys. Aristippus looked down his nose at some of his less prosperous fellow philosophers and wise men who would not stoop that low. One day he saw his colleague Diogenes washing some vegetables and he said to him disdainfully: “If you would only learn to flatter King Denys, you would not have to be washing lentils.” Diogenes looked up slowly and in the same tone replied, “And you, if you had only learned to live on lentils, would not have to flatter King Denys.” Also on the same theme of flattery: Abraham Lincoln observed: “I was not accustomed to flattery; I was like the Hoosier who loved gingerbread better than any man and got less of it.” Or, Oscar Wilde, who said: “Flatterer: One who extremely exaggerates in his opinion of your qualities, so that it may come nearer to your opinion of them.”