He adopted and developed the ethical side of Socrates' teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue.

[8] He survived the Battle of Leuctra (371 BCE), as he is reported to have compared the victory of the Thebans to a set of schoolboys beating their master.

Filled with enthusiasm for the Socratic idea of virtue, he founded a school of his own in the Cynosarges, where he attracted the poorer classes by the simplicity of his life and teaching.

[6] His favourite style seems to have been dialogues, some of them being vehement attacks on his contemporaries, as on Alcibiades in the second of his two works entitled Cyrus, on Gorgias in his Archelaus and on Plato in his Satho.

[15] He possessed considerable powers of wit and sarcasm, and was fond of playing upon words; saying, for instance, that he would rather fall among crows (korakes) than flatterers (kolakes), for the one devour the dead, but the other the living.

6.13) [17][18][19] In his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laertius lists the following as the favourite themes of Antisthenes: "He would prove that virtue can be taught; and that nobility belongs to none other than the virtuous.

[27] It is closely connected with reason, but to enable it to develop itself in action, and to be sufficient for happiness, it requires the aid of Socratic strength (Greek: Σωκρατικὴ ἱσχύς).

As a proper nominalist, he held that definition and predication are either false or tautological, since we can only say that every individual is what it is, and can give no more than a description of its qualities, e.g. that silver is like tin in colour.

[32] The principal basis of this claim is a quotation in Alexander of Aphrodisias' “Comments on Aristotle's 'Topics'” with a three-way distinction: In later times Antisthenes came to be seen as the founder of the Cynics, but it is by no means certain that he would have recognized the term.

[35] There are many later tales about the infamous Cynic Diogenes of Sinope dogging Antisthenes' footsteps and becoming his faithful hound,[36] but it is similarly uncertain that the two men ever met.