Ethical Writings of Cicero Quotes

“Nothing that is devoid of justice can be honorable. It was well said by Plato: “Not only is knowledge, when divorced from justice, to be termed subtlety rather than wisdom; but also the soul prompt to encounter danger, if moved thereto by self-interest, and not by the common good, should have the reputation of audacity rather than of courage.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“But since the resources of individuals are small, while the multitude of those who need them is unbounded,”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“nothing is generous that is not at the same time just.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“the rational treatment of any subject ought to take its start from definition, that readers may understand what the author is writing about.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“its underlying principles are in such close harmony with the absolute and eternal right that they can never become obsolete. At the same time, the division and arrangement of the treatise give it, so far as I know, the precedence over all other ethical treatises ancient or modern.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“We may, I think, give the name of perfect duty to the absolute right, which the Greeks term κατόρθωμα;1 while contingent duty is what they call καθη̂κον.2 According to their definitions, what is right in itself is perfect duty; that for the doing of which a satisfactory reason can be given is a contingent”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream

“In Cicero’s time the left and the right wing in ethical philosophy were represented by the Epicureans and the Stoics respectively, while the Peripatetics held a middle ground.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ethical Writings of Cicero: De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Scipio's Dream