Quotes from Marcus Tullius Cicero

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

No power is strong enough to be lasting, if it labours under the weight of fear.

While there's life, there's hope.

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory

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?

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

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

It is the act of a bad man to deceive by falsehood.

It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.

The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.

For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture.

Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

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

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

The foundation of justice is good faith.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

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

In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names

Philosophy, rightly defined, is simply the love of wisdom