110+ Wise Cicero Quotes from Politics to Friendship

Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Read some of these Cicero quotes for the enlightenment.

• "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!"

• "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

• "When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff."

• "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."

• "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."

• "Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them."

• "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."

• "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."

• "If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words."

• "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."

• "It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own."

• "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."

• "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."

• "Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goes out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead."

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

• "To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches."

• If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."

• "By doubting we come at truth."

• "Man must suffer to be wise."

• "Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men."

• "The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory."

• "Extreme justice is extreme injustice."

Quotes from Cicero

Take a look at some of these Cicero quotes below.

• "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."

• "Let the welfare of the people be the ultimate law."

• "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."

• "There are two ways to resolve conflicts, through violence or through negotiation. Violence is for wild beasts, negotiation is for human beings."

• "We should be careful that our benevolence does not exceed our means."

• "What society does to its children, so will its children do to society."

• "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."

• "They condemn what they do not understand."

• "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."

• "It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment."

• "A home without books is a body without soul."

• "Nothing is so secure as that money will not defeat it."

• "Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age.. each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season."

• "Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything."

• "Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system."

• "No one dances sober, unless he is insane."

• "It shows a weak mind not to bear prosperity as well as adversity with moderation."

• "Whatever you do, do with all your might."

• "It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good."

• "They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race."

• "The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn."

• "We should be as careful of our words as of our actions."

Cicero Quotes on Government

Down here are some Cicero quotes on government you need to read.

• "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."

• "More laws, less justice."

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

• "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."

• "There are no true friends in politics."

• "As laws multiply, injustice increases."

• "The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due."

• "I know that it is likely that as worship of the gods declines, faith between men and all human society will disappear, as well as that most excellent of all virtues, which is justice."

• "I am of the opinion which you have always held, that "viva voce" voting at elections is the best method.

• “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.”

• “In communities and individuals alike, excessive freedom topples over into excessive slavery. Extreme freedom produces a tyrant, along with the extremely harsh and evil slavery that goes with him.”

• “The good life is impossible without a good state; and there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered state.”

• “There is no doubt that a person who is called generous and open-handed has duty in mind, not gain. So likewise justice looks for no prize and no price; it is sought for itself, and is at once the cause and meaning of all the virtues.”

• “The aim of a ship's captain is a successful voyage; a doctor's, health; a general's, victory. So the aim of our ideal statesman is the citizens' happy life--that is, a life secure in wealth, rich in resources, abundant in renown, and honorable in its moral character. That is the task which I wish him to accomplish--the greatest and best that any man can have.”

• “Justice looks for no prize and no price; it is sought for itself, and is at once the cause and meaning of all the virtues... The worst kind of injustice is to look for profit from injustice.”

• “We are born for justice, and... what is just is based, not on opinion, but on nature.”

• “Honesty is the best policy”

• “By all means press on... and bear in mind that you are not mortal, but only that body of yours. You are not the person presented by your physical appearance. A man's true self is his mind, not that form which can be pointed out by a finger.”

• “However one defines man, the same definition applies to us all.”

• "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.

• "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."

• "Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves."

• "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."

• "God's law is 'right reason. When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice."

Cicero on Friendship Quotes

Photo by Zorak from YouTube

Who has ever thought that Cicero also concerns about friendship? Here are some Cicero quotes about friendship you might agree with.

• “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

• "Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends."

• “The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.”

• "Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind."

• “A friend is, as it were, a second self.”

• "He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect."

• “The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.”

• "Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it."

• “The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.”

• "It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged."

• “Friendship is given us by nature, not to favor vice, but to aid virtue.”

• "Friends are proved by adversity."

• “To give and receive advice - the former with freedom, and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation - is peculiarly appropriate to geniune friendship.”

• "Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion in vice."

• “Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.”

• “Loyalty is what we seek in friendship.”

• “In friendship we find nothing false or insincere; everything is straight forward, and springs from the heart.”

• “Friends, though absent, are still present.”

• “We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own, and we are equally grieved at their sorrows. Wherefore the wise people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves, and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends.”

• “Never injure a friend, even in jest.”

• "Nature loves nothing solitary, and always reaches out to something, as a support, which ever in the sincerest friend is most delightful."

• “Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.”

• “Friendship is infinitely better than kindness.”

• “Friendship, on the other hand, serves a great host of different purposes all at the same time. In whatever direction you turn, it still remains yours. No barrier can shut it out. It can never be untimely; it can never be in the way. We need friendship all the time, just as much as we need the proverbial prime necessities of life, fire and water.”

These are all Cicero quotes you can read. After reading all of these quotes, you must understand how deep his thoughts are about humans relations and the government that we still can relate to, even after all these hundred years.