There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war.As quoted in "On the Fortune of Alexander" by Plutarch, 332 a-b.But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos. If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes.
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