Quotes About Cicero

right man to prepare the citizens of his country, who were facing disempowerment, for the benefits of the vita contemplativa. The transition to reflective existence was worth an error in reasoning: Cicero unhesitatingly created a lofty nimbus for the future Roman spectator by portraying Pythagoras making the many in the stadium into the few in study.

Astrology fell into the class of a fake lie ...and not worth the efforts of the debunking engine Cicero had been born with in place of a brain. Cicero's capacities were reserved for lies that mattered. Ideology, though that word was yet unknown to him: the veil of sustaining fiction that drove the world, what people needed to believe. This, Cicero wished to unmask and unmake, decry and destroy. (p. 65)

In high school, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a bunch of us spent a whole year reading Cicero—De Senectute, on old age; De Amicitia, on friendship. De Senectute, with all its resigned wisdom, I will probably never be capable of living up to or imitating. But De Amicitia I could make a stab at, and could have any time in the last thirty-four years.

Cicero said 'So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.'

So commonplace was crucifixion in the Roman Empire that Cicero referred to it as "that plague." Among the citizenry, the word "cross" (crux) became a popular and particularly vulgar taunt, akin to "go hang yourself.

Levmur superstitine, lbermur mortis met. (Cicero Fin. 1.63:

Vvere est cgitre. (Cicero Tusc. 5.111.)

It is observed by Cicero, that men of the greatest and most shining parts are most actuated by ambition.

The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible

What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.

Favours out of place I regard as positive injuries.

To the sick while there is life there is hope.

Cicero believed "luck" determined the success of gambling with essentially random devices. He also apparently understood that there was a relationship between the luck (odds) on a particular throw or set of throws and long-term frequencies. But Cicero was later executed, illustrating that rationality does not guarantee success; it only increases its likelihood. In fact, as pointed out earlier, opting for rationality when others do not can lead to social ostracism.

In edem es nv. (Cicero Fam.

There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished; that of the other continues to this day.

Yo dedico un capítulo entero al elegante método de Cicerón, que consta de cinco pasos para la construcción de un discurso (invención, organización, estilo, memoria y ejecución)

think the Princess should read the New Testament both night and morning, and also certain selected portions of the Old Testament. She must become fully conversant with the gospels. She should, I believe also study Plutarch's Enchiridion, Seneca's Maxims, and of course Plato and Cicero." He glanced at his friend. "I suggest that Sir Thomas More's Utopia would provide good reading.

And so we drifted towards calamity. At times, Cicero was shrewd enough to see it. "Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based upon a citizens' militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed of by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?

There is a wonderful line in one of Cicero's letters to Atticus in which he describes moving into a property and says: I have put out my books and now my house has a soul.

I found, for example, that Cicero was fond of repeating certain phrases, and these I learned to reduce to a line, or even a few dots--thus proving what most people already know, that politicians essentially say the same thing over and over again.

But as Cicero had long tried to convince him, a speech is a performance, not a philosophical discourse: it must appeal to the emotions more than to the intellect

Cicero himself appeared, hand in hand with Tullia, nodding good morning to everyone, greeting each by name ("the first rule in politics, Tiro: never forget a face").