Explore Quotes by Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Intellect engages us in the pursuit of Truth. The Passions impel us to Action.

The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.

Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.

Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science].

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

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

It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post.

Promises are not to be kept, if the keeping of them is to prove harmful to those to whom you have made them.

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.

There is no castle so strong that it cannot be overthrown by money.

One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees.

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.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

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.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money. Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

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.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.