Cicero 106 BC – 43 BC
Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) was a Roman philosopher of the Ancient era, associated with Stoicism and Hellenistic.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher of the late Roman Republic, who served as consul in 63 BC and was murdered in 43 BC during the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate. His philosophical writings, composed largely in the last years of his life, transmitted the major schools of Hellenistic philosophy to the Latin-speaking world and coined much of the Latin philosophical vocabulary subsequently inherited by medieval and modern European thought. Major works include On Duties, On the Nature of the Gods, the Tusculan Disputations, On Friendship, and On Old Age, all written in the form of dialogues drawing on Stoic, Epicurean, and Academic Skeptic positions. His prose style became the standard for classical Latin and shaped European education for nearly two thousand years. His political ideas profoundly influenced the founders of the American and French republics.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) was the greatest Latin philosophical prose stylist of the late Republic and the most consequential single transmitter of Greek philosophy into the Roman and subsequently the Christian and European traditions. A novus homo from Arpinum, he rose through the cursus honorum to the consulship in 63 BC, defended the Republic against Catiline, and was murdered by Mark Antony's agents at sixty-three.
Cicero's philosophical works were largely written in two intense periods of forced retirement from politics. They include De Officiis (On Duties), De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), De Finibus (On the Ends of Good and Evil), the Tusculan Disputations, and dialogues on the Republic and the Laws. Cicero was an Academic Skeptic by training and a syncretist by inclination: his works present the rival Greek schools to a Roman audience without the rigid commitment of a Stoic or Epicurean partisan.
Cicero's prose became the Latin model for Augustine, the medieval scholastics, the Renaissance humanists, and the Enlightenment. He fixed the Latin philosophical vocabulary that subsequent traditions used — moralis, qualitas, essentia — and his political works shaped Anglo-American constitutional thought through John Adams and others. He is one of the few major figures who is both a philosopher and a major historical political actor.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Roman
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Stoicism, Hellenistic
Selected quotes
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“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil. -
“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
Reddite igitur, patres conscripti, ei vitam, cui ademistis. Vita enim mortuorum in memoria est posita vivorum. -
Attributed to Cicero:
“While there's life, there's hope.”
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“Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”
Nam et secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores. -
Attributed to Cicero:
“Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offence.”
Cicero by topic
Cicero vs other philosophers
Frequently asked about Cicero
- When did Cicero live?
- Cicero was born in 106 BC and died in 43 BC.
- Where was Cicero from?
- Cicero was a Roman philosopher of the Ancient era.
- What philosophical movements is Cicero associated with?
- Cicero was associated with Stoicism and Hellenistic.
- What was Cicero known for?
- Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher of the late Roman Republic, who served as consul in 63 BC and was murdered in 43 BC during the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate.
- How many quotes are attributed to Cicero?
- There are 50 attributed quotations from Cicero in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.
Quotes that are not actually from Cicero
These lines are widely circulated as Cicero, but they do not appear in Cicero's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“So live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The origin of this quote is often misattributed to Cicero; however, it is from Line 135-136 of Book 2, Satire 2 by Horace, "Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus." The English translation that most closely matches the one misrepresented as Cicero's is from a collection of
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“The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: From Ben Moreell , " Of Bread and Circuses ", The Freeman , January 1956, pp. 29–32 . The quotation is from the left column of p. 31 in the original publication. Moreell's piece makes no mention of Cicero, but opens with a correct attribution of the phrase " Bread and circuses " to Juvenal .
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“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: As quoted in InfoWorld , Vol. 23, No. 16, 16 April 2001, p. 49. This had been attributed previously to many other sources from 1908 on, according to this analysis by Quote Investigator .
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“Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. | Paraphrased as "The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are." Truly from Tacitus , Annals, Book III, 27
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“The following three quotes are sometimes wrongly attributed to Cicero. In fact, they come from a novel about Cicero by Taylor Caldwell , and are not found in any of Cicero's actual writings.”
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? Taylor Caldwell in her novel based on the life of Cicero, A Pillar of Iron (1965), p. 451 Antonius [i. e., C. Antonius Hybrida ] heartily agreed with him [sc. Cicero] that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that public debt should be reduced, that the arrogance…
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“Diem adimere aegritudinem hominibus.”
Time heals all wounds. Truly from Terentius , Heautontimorumenos, Act III, scene i
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“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Attributed to Cicero in J. M. Braude's Speaker's Desk Book of Quips, Quotes, & Anecdotes (Jaico Pub. House, 1966), p. 52. Dennis McHenry in a 2011 post at theCAMPVS.com identified a source for the exact form of words in the essay "On the Pleasure of Reading" by Sir John Lubbock , published in The Contemporary Review , vol. 49 (1886) , pp. 240–51 , in which Lubbock wrote that "Cicero described a room without books as a body without a soul" (p. 241). The same sentence may also be found on p. 61 of Lubbock's collection The Pleasures of Life. Part I. 18th edition (London and New York : Macmillan and Co. 1890) , in a lecture titled "A Song of Books". McHenry suggested that Lubbock may have had… (Disputed.)
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“The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.”
As quoted in A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (2007) by John Clippinger, p. 130 Compare: "The distinguishing property of man is to search for and to follow after truth." – De Officiis , Book I, 13 (Disputed.)
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“As quoted in A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (2007) by John Clippinger, p. 130”
Compare: "The distinguishing property of man is to search for and to follow after truth." – De Officiis , Book I, 13 (Disputed.)
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“For as lack of adornment is said to become some women, so this subtle oration, though without embellishment, gives delight.”
Supposedly from De Oratore , 78 ("...for women more easily preserve the ancient language unaltered, because, not having experience of the conversation of a multitude of people, they always retain what they originally learned..."), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations , 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Loveliness / Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, / But is when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most", James Thomson , The Seasons , "Autumn", Line 204 (Disputed.)
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“The freedom of poetic license.”
Suggested to be from Pro Publio Sestio (sec. 6: "...my attacking those men with some freedom of expression..." (Disputed.)
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“Genius is fostered by energy.”
Suggested to be from Pro Caelio (ch. xix, sec. 45: "...in that branch of study you saw not only his genius shine forth, which frequently, even when it is not nourished by industry, still produces great effects by its own natural vigour...") (Disputed.)