Cicero (Cicero)

No power is strong enough to be lasting if it labors under the weight of fear.
-- Cicero

Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
-- Cicero

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
-- Cicero

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
-- 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?
-- Cicero

Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
-- Cicero

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
-- Cicero

Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.
-- Cicero

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.
-- Cicero

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
-- Cicero

Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.
-- Cicero

No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.
-- Cicero

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
-- Cicero

Nothing quite new is perfect
-- Cicero

Our thoughts are free.
-- Cicero

Strain every nerve to gain your point.
-- Cicero

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.
-- Cicero

The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong.
-- Cicero

The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.
-- Cicero

To be content with what one has is the greatest and truest of riches.
-- Cicero

To be ignorant of the past is to forever be a child.
-- Cicero

We are obliged to respect, defend and maintain the common bonds of union and fellowship that exist among all members of the human race.
-- Cicero

We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.
-- Cicero

We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.
-- Cicero

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
-- Cicero

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?
-- Cicero

The freedom of poetic license.
-- Cicero

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.
-- Cicero

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.
-- Cicero

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
-- Cicero

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

-- Cicero

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