Cicero Quotes

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

A man of faith is also full of courage

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.

A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.

The welfare of the people is the highest law

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” — Cicero

In this statement, my Scipio, I build on your own admirable definition, that there can be no community, properly so called, unless it be regulated by a combination of rights. And by this definition it appears that a multitude of men may be just as tyrannical as a single despot and indeed this is the most odious of all tyrannies, since no monster can be more barbarous than the mob, which assumes the name and mask of the people.

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.

I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all, but glory.

To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic.

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.

The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.

Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.

Books: our unfailing companions