Top 500 Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

102. “The sinews of war are infinite money.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

103. “Taxes are the sinews of the state.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

104. “When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

105. “It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man’s life.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

106. “We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

107. “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

108. “What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

109. “It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

110. “Never injure a friend, even in jest.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

111. “Laws are silent in time of war.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

112. “The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret – that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

113. “No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

114. “When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

115. “Virtue is its own reward.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

116. “Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

117. “To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

118. “It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one: what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

119. “Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

120. “They condemn what they do not understand.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

121. “Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

122. “There is no duty more indispensible than that of returning a kindness.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

123. “Learning is a kind of natural food for the mind.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

124. “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

125. “Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

126. “Man’s best support is a very dear friend.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

127. “It is a true saying that ‘one falsehood easily leads to another.’”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

128. “Aristoteles quidem ait: ‘Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.’ Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

129. “Extreme justice is extreme injustice.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

130. “I hope that the memory of our friendship will be everlasting.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

131. “The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

132. “For what people have always sought is equality before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

Featured in: Rights Quotes

133. “The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

134. “To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

135. “The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

136. “An unjust peace is better than a just war.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

137. “Time is the herald of truth.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

138. “The best interpreter of the law is custom.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

139. “Nothing is difficult in the eyes of a lover.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

140. “The spirit is the true self. The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

141. “History illumes reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

142. “In prosperity let us most carefully avoid pride, disdain, and arrogance.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

143. “Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

144. “A good orator is pointed and impassioned.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

145. “Most happy is he who is entirely self-reliant, and who centers all his requirements in himself alone.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

146. “Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

147. “You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

148. “Man was born for two things – thinking and acting.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

149. “If we lose affection and kindliness from our life: we lose all that gives it charm.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

150. “Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man’s life.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero