Cicero Quotes on Mind
Cicero treated the mind, and above all reason, as the distinctive endowment of human beings, and the quotes gathered here reflect that conviction. Reason for Cicero is not merely a private faculty but something woven into the order of things: law itself, he writes, is the perfection of reason implanted in us by nature. He attended closely to the mind's disorders, observing that diseases of the mind are more common and more pernicious than diseases of the body, and he valued the capacity to revise one's views, since later thoughts are usually the wiser. Cicero also praised gratitude as a disposition of mind that is the parent of all the other virtues. Drawn from his works on law, philosophy, and rhetoric, these passages show the mind as the seat of reason, virtue, and self-correction.
Quotes
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Attributed to Cicero:
“The wise are instructed by reason; average minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes, by instinct.”
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“Law is the perfection of reason implanted in us by nature, which enjoins what should be done, and forbids what we should not do.”
De Legibus(On the Laws)(c. 40s BC) -
“Of any man at all it is to err, to persist in error is of none except unthinking; for the later thoughts, as they say, are usually the wiser.”
Philippicae–Philippics(44 BC) | Philippica XII, 5; translation of Walter C.A. Ker -
“Diseases of the mind are more common and more pernicious than diseases of the body.”
Tusculanae Disputationes–Tusculan Disputations(45 BC) | Book III, Chapter III -
“Shortened Version: We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.”
De Natura Deorum–On the Nature of the Gods(45 BC) | Book I, section 6 -
“A grateful mind is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the other virtues.”
As quoted in Great Thoughts from Latin Authors (1884), by Craufurd Tait Ramage, p. 32 -
“We, on the contrary, make blessedness of life depend upon an untroubled mind, and exemption from all duties.”
De Natura Deorum–On the Nature of the Gods(45 BC) -
“No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.”
Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age(44 BC) | section 24