Cicero was a very wise man. Other quotes worth thinking about:
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“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.”
― Cicero
The Enemy Within
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 BC – 43 BC
“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s [children’s] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”
― Cicero
Pity reading of the classics is so dead. Nothing new under the sun as another classic might say.
Thanks for the quotes. I need to look further into his stuff. And if the squeaky wheel gets the grease, he got greased good and hard. After Julius Caesar was offed, he was very critical of Marc Antony, who had him assassinated and put his severed head and hands on display.
Just as Plato and Aristotle lived during the collapse of the Greek empire, Cicero saw the collapse of Rome as it happened. Rome circled the drain for 400 years before the final “schlooop” .
It’s also worth looking up quotes from Marcus Aurelius. Tons of wisdom there.
I don’t know how many people have said we’re living out the last chapters of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” but there sure is a lot of wisdom from there that has needed to be re-learned every few years for the last 2,000.
Interesting that their empire failed as well with that knowledge.
The book, “The Fourth Turning” written in 1997 said about 2005 give or take is when it would occur.
I read it in 2019 it is good and the explanations are believable. A lot of the research and descriptions come from the Roman Empire. The four turnings take about a century no wonder history repeats but they lasted longer than that amazingly. Probably because of wise men like these.
If that is the case, we are there.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
Cicero was a very wise man. Other quotes worth thinking about:
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“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.”
― Cicero
The Enemy Within
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 BC – 43 BC
“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s [children’s] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”
― Cicero
Pity reading of the classics is so dead. Nothing new under the sun as another classic might say.
Thanks for the quotes. I need to look further into his stuff. And if the squeaky wheel gets the grease, he got greased good and hard. After Julius Caesar was offed, he was very critical of Marc Antony, who had him assassinated and put his severed head and hands on display.
Just as Plato and Aristotle lived during the collapse of the Greek empire, Cicero saw the collapse of Rome as it happened. Rome circled the drain for 400 years before the final “schlooop” .
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It’s also worth looking up quotes from Marcus Aurelius. Tons of wisdom there.
I don’t know how many people have said we’re living out the last chapters of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” but there sure is a lot of wisdom from there that has needed to be re-learned every few years for the last 2,000.
Interesting that their empire failed as well with that knowledge.
The book, “The Fourth Turning” written in 1997 said about 2005 give or take is when it would occur.
I read it in 2019 it is good and the explanations are believable. A lot of the research and descriptions come from the Roman Empire. The four turnings take about a century no wonder history repeats but they lasted longer than that amazingly. Probably because of wise men like these.