Diogenes

To be a true cynic one has to think like a Greek.

Diogenes was a beggar who made his home in the streets of Athens and made a virtue of extreme poverty. There he lived in a large tub, rather than a house, and was said to have walked through the streets carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He pursued the cynic ideal of self-sufficiency: a life which was natural and not dependent upon the luxuries of civilization. Believing that virtue was better revealed in action and not theory, his life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society.

He believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog. Besides performing natural bodily functions in public without unease, a dog will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe. Unlike human beings who either dupe others or are duped, dogs will give an honest bark at the truth.

The modern terms cynic and cynical derive from the Greek word kynikos, the adjective form of kyon, meaning dog.