Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

The secular law has as its task not to turn the world lying in evil into the Kingdom of God, but to prevent it from turning into hell.

Man has made 32 million laws since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai... but he has never improved on God's law.

A human society obeys the dictates of reason and is guided and governed by a respect for justice.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

Law alone cannot make men see right.

Politicians may do as they please, so long as they violate no rule of right, no principle of justice, no law of God; but in no world, in no order, or condition, have men the right to do wrong.

The law exists to express our values.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

Law is not law, if it violates the principles of eternal justice.

If there is anything I am about, it is I want justice in society.

Law is the highest reason implanted in Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite.

...Perses, hear me out on justice, and take what I have to say to heart; cease thinking of violence. For the son of Kronos, Zeus, has ordained this law to men: that fishes and wild beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice in them; but to mankind he gave justice which proves for the best.

Justice is the great interest of man on earth.

The Law ... is perfection of reason.

There are unjust laws as there are unjust men.

I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

The industrial and social injustice of our era is the tragic aftermath of democracy's overemphasis on freedom as the "right to do whatever you please." No, freedom means the right to do what you ought, and ought implies law, and law implies justice, and justice implies God. So too in war, a nation that fights for freedom divorced from justice has no right to war, because it does not know why it wants to be free, or why it wants anyone else to be free.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. If he finds himself an individual who cannot live in society, or who pretends he has need of only his own resources do not consider him as a member of humanity; he is a savage beast or a god.

Reason is the life of the law.

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.