Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher. He was a member of the Roman Senate, and a friend and follower of General Pompey the Great, who was Julius Caesar’s nemesis.
Cicero was also one of the most prolific and versatile of Latin orators and authors. He founded a model for Latin prose; his surviving works include speeches, treatises on rhetoric, philosophical works, and letters. Many of his rhetorical devices are still used by public speakers today.
Born in Arpinum (now Arpino,) central Italy, Cicero was educated in Rome and learned rhetoric and oratory in Athens and Rhodes. He worked as a defense lawyer at first and was then elected to serve in the Roman Senate together with Julius Caesar.
Cicero foresaw that Rome was in its final years, threatened by civil wars, and by the régime of Julius Caesar, and the triumvirates that succeeded him. Cicero tried to bolster the Roman Republic by subduing an uprising by Senator Catiline. As a political counsel, Cicero put the conspirators to death at once without giving them the right to a fair trial because he believed that the Republic was in danger. This move earned him many political enemies.
Later, Cicero was left out of the plot to kill Julius Caesar. However, when Cicero defended that murder in the interests of the Republic, he was forced into retirement from public life.
Cicero went on exile and wrote several philosophical works. He was known for his eloquence and incisive written dialogues—notably De Legibus (On the Laws, c.52–43 BCE,) Consolatio (On Grief and Consolation, 45 BCE,) Laelius de Amicitia (Laelius on Friendship, 44 BCE,) De Officiis (On Duties, 44 BCE) and De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods, 45 BCE.)
In the Philippics (43 BCE,) Cicero attacked Mark Antony, who, later on, had Cicero hunted down and beheaded. When Cicero’s head was taken back to Mark Antony, his wife Fulvia pulled out Cicero’s tongue and stabbed it with her golden hairpins in vengeance against Cicero’s power of speech.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Cicero
It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.
—Cicero
Topics: Mistakes
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
—Cicero
Topics: Passion, Reason
Give me a young man in whom there is something of the old,
and an old man in whom there is something of the young.
Guided so, a man may grow old in body, but never in mind.
—Cicero
Topics: Aging
Superstition is a senseless fear of God; religion the intelligent and pious worship of the deity.
—Cicero
Topics: Superstition
There is something pleasurable in calm remembrance of a past sorrow.
—Cicero
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
—Cicero
Topics: Liberty
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?
—Cicero
Topics: Welfare
It is difficult to set bounds to the price unless you first set bounds to the wish.
—Cicero
Topics: Wealth
What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.
—Cicero
Topics: Wishes, One liners
You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.
—Cicero
Topics: Age, Aging
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others, and to forget his own.
—Cicero
Topics: Faults, Fools, Foolishness
The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he comes down to human affairs.
—Cicero
It is better to receive than to do injury.
—Cicero
Topics: Revenge, Vengeance
Let a man practice the profession which he best knows.
—Cicero
Topics: Career
Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.
—Cicero
Topics: Fear
It is a truth but too well known, that rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.
—Cicero
Topics: Youth, Prudence
Philosophy, if rightly defined, is nothing but the love of wisdom.
—Cicero
Topics: Philosophy
Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?
—Cicero
Topics: Children
There is something in the nature of things which the mind of man, which reason, which human power cannpt effect, and certainly that which produces this must be better than man. What can this be but God?
—Cicero
Topics: God
A letter does not blush.
—Cicero
Topics: Letters
The man who commands efficiently must have
obeyed others in the past, and the man who obeys
dutifully is worthy of being some day a commander.
—Cicero
Topics: Service
Virtue is its own reward. There’s a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.
—Cicero
Topics: Virtue, Friendship, Virtues
The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.
—Cicero
Topics: Moderation
Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.
—Cicero
Topics: Age, Aging
As you have sown so shall you reap.
—Cicero
Topics: Results
There is in superstition a senseless fear of God.
—Cicero
Topics: Superstition
No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest god.
—Cicero
Topics: Brave
No man can be brave who considers pain the greatest evil of life; or temperate, who regards pleasure as the highest good.
—Cicero
Topics: Bravery, Courage
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.
—Cicero
Topics: Argument, Arguments, One liners
The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.
—Cicero
Topics: Miscellaneous, Events, History
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