“I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.”

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

Sex Slavery (1890)
Context: O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely upon their mother's word instead of the hired certification of some priest of the Church, or the Law! I wonder if the children would be improved to know what their fathers have done. I would rather, much rather, not know who my father was than know he had been a tyrant to my mother. I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of Nature.

Reply to questionnaire, "The Cost of Letters" in Horizon (September 1946).
General sources

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Attributed to Cato in Plutarch, Parallel Lives 19:4 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0013%3Achapter%3D19.
Original Greek: ‘μᾶλλον γὰρ,’ ἔφη, ‘βούλομαι ζητεῖσθαι, διὰ τί μου ἀνδριὰς οὐ κεῖται ἢ διὰ τί κεῖται’

Sand and Foam (1926)

Book XXII, sec. 38
History of Rome

Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1912-1927, [Bolshevik Leadership, Correspondence 1912-1927], p. 90
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Gorgias, 482c
Plato, Gorgias