Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and Academic Skeptic who played an important role in the politics of the late Roman Republic and upheld optimate principles during the crisis that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. These Cicero quotes will motivate you.
Best Cicero Quotes
- “A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful good society’ which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean ‘more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Politicians are not born; they are excreted.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the “general welfare of the people.” Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within….for the traitor appears not to be a traitor…he rots the soul of a nation…he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “People don’t know the value of what they have until it is gone: Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered…. Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude. Don’t wait till freedom is gone before you enjoy, value, support, protect and make the most of it!” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes
- “Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum. (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.)” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes
- “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. One knows how numerous this clique is, how they stick together and what power they exercise through their unions. They are a nation of rascals and deceivers.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all, but glory.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“What society does to its children, so will its children do to society.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Please go on, make your threats. I don’t like to submit to mere implication.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “They condemn what they do not understand.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “The budget should be balanced, the treasury refilled, public debt reduced, the arrogance of officialdom tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “There are two ways to resolve conflicts, through violence or through negotiation. Violence is for wild beasts, negotiation is for human beings.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Let the welfare of the people be the ultimate law.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “When money is unreasonably coveted, it is a disease of the mind which is called avarice.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Vicious habits are so odious and degrading that they transform the individual who practices them into an incarnate demon.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “It is a man’s own dishonesty, his crimes, his wickedness, and boldness, that takes away from him soundness of mind; these are the furies, these the flames, and firebrands, of the wicked.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“More laws, less justice.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes
- “A man would have no pleasures in discovering all the beauties of the universe, even in heaven itself, unless he had a partner to whom he might communicate his joys.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Life without learning is death.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “We should be careful that our benevolence does not exceed our means.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “When time and need require, we should resist with all our might, and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Anyone may fairly seek his own advantage, but no one has a right to do so at another’s expense.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “In a republic, this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Nothing is so secure as that money will not defeat it.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
