Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes on Man (47 Quotes)


    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.

    There is something in the nature of things which the mind of man, which reason, which human power cannot effect, and certainly that which produces this must be better than man. What can this be but God.

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




    Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.


    If I err in my belief that the souls of men are immortal, I err gladly, and do not wish to lose so delightful an error.

    O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

    What is so beneficial to the people as liberty, which we see not only to be greedily sought after by men, But also by beasts, and to be preferred to all things.

    Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.


    Wise men are instructed by reason men of less understanding, by experience the most ignorant, by necessity the beasts, by nature.

    No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.


    We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

    ... for until that God who rules all the region of the sky ... has freed you from the fetters of your body, you cannot gain admission here. Men were created with the understanding that they were to look after that sphere called Earth, which you see in the middle of the temple. Minds have been given to them out of the eternal fires you call fixed stars and planets, those spherical solids which, quickened with divine minds, journey through their circuits and orbits with amazing speed....


    We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.


    As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.


    Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?


    If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

    It might be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently is nothing short of criminal.

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

    There is nothing done by the hands of man which sometime or other time does not destroy


    No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.

    If a man aspires to the highest place, it is no dishonor to him to halt at the second, or even at the third.

    We are born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.


    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. For the traitor appears not a traitor he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

    A careful physician ... before he attempts to administer a remedy to his patient, must investigate not only the malady of the man he wishes to cure, but also his habits when in health, and his physical constitution.

    What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?


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

    The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.

    In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in doing good to their fellowmen.


    What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?

    Give me a young man in whom there is something of the old, and an old man with something of the young guided so, a man may grow old in body, but never in mind.

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

    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

    If a man could mount to heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had some one to share in his pleasure



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