16.19

Distinctions Cancelled (Box 16.8)

Diogenes Laertius says that Socrates, the wisest of the wise, is reported to have said there were three blessings for which he was grateful to Fortune: “First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes; next, that I was born a man and not a woman; third, a Greek and not a barbarian.”¹

Paul writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

1. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), §1.33.