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The Best Quotes Of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ancient Roman Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator and Statesman, 106 BC-43 BC
The Best Quotes Of
Marcus Tullius
Cicero,
Ancient Roman
Lawyer, Writer,
Scholar, Orator
and Statesman,
106 BC-43 BC
Tabacco: My 4 years of Latin at Walnut Hills High School is finally paying off. This Post includes the Best of Cicero. His quotes are just as cogent, just as powerful, and just as relevant today as they were when he said them over 2,000 years ago.
I am going to save you 4 years of rigorous study. Gee, am I not a great guy!
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ancient Roman Lawyer, Writer,
Scholar, Orator and Statesman, 106 BC-43 BC
“To live is to think.”
“It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.”
“If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.”
Tabacco: Cicero also abhorred “Euphemisms”!
“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error”
“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.”
“If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.”
“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.”
“A home without books is a body without soul.”
“To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?”
“Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak”
“Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat”
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
“Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty”
“The more laws, the less justice.”
“The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed”
“Advice is judged by results, not by intentions”
“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.”
Tabacco: No one violates this precept more often and with greater relish than Tabacco.
“By doubting we come at truth.”
“We are in bondage to the law so that we might be free”
“Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; the beasts, by nature.”
“Philosophy, rightly defined, is simply the love of wisdom.”
“The foundation of justice is good faith.”
“Ability without honor is useless.”
“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.”
“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.”
“It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post”
“If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.”
Tabacco: Is Cicero a Tabacco Reader?
“I criticize by creation, not by finding fault”
“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 the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.”
“They condemn what they do not understand”
“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence”
Tabacco: I hear you, Cicero; and I am ending this Tribute to your wisdom now!
You’ve heard a lot of these quotes or variations of them before. But you thought they came from Barry Goldwater or Al Gore. Sorry, folks; Cicero lived over 2,000 years ago! Let’s give this great philosopher and orator his due. I come not to bury Cicero, but to praise him!
One more quotation; this time in Latin!
Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) – Julius Caesar, Roman general and Consul, 47 BC. Yes, folks, Caesar and Cicero knew each other well.
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)