Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Silence can imply ambiguity and does not clarify one's position.
This quote by Cicero suggests that while silence may not directly indicate agreement or confession, it equally does not serve as a clear rejection of an idea or accusation. It highlights the complexity of communication and the significance of what remains unsaid, pointing to the nuances in human interaction where silence carries weight.
Themes
SilenceCommunicationAmbiguityAdmissionDenial
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of silence in communication.
More from Marcus Tullius Cicero
All quotes βThose wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defence can actually be just.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Similar quotes
Mind is the absence of meditation. The moment meditation arises in you, mind is found nowhere.
RajneeshRead
While crime is punished it yet increases.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Older women can afford to agree that femininity is a charade, a matter of colored hair, ecru lace and whalebones, the kind of slap and tat that transvestites are in love with, and no more.
Germaine GreerRead
What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
Frederick DouglassRead
When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.
Thomas MooreRead
I find this in all these places I've been travelling - from India to China, to Japan and Europe and to Brazil - there is a frustration with the terms of public discourse, with a kind of absence of discussion of questions of justice and ethics and of values.
Michael SandelRead