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He who so interprets the supreme good as to disjoin it from virtue, and measures it by his own convenience, and not by the standard of right,—he, I say, if he be consistent with himself, and be not sometimes overcome by natural goodness, can cultivate neither friendship, nor justice, nor generosity.

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Cicero

I never cease urging peace, which, however unfair, is better than the justest war in the world.

Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself.

No sensible man (among the many things that have been written on this kind) ever imputed inconsistency to another for changing his mind.

That he was never less at leisure than when at leisure; nor that he was ever less alone than when alone.

There is nothing better fitted to delight the reader than change of circumstances and varieties of fortune.

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

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Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Cicero (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.