Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

To think truly is noble and to be deceived is base.

A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

...he'll never lie - the man is far too wise.

Make a habit of telling the truth, or make a habit of lying: to decide each case on its own merits is exhausting, and hardly ever worth it.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

I think what makes us human is those choices - whether to tell the truth or not.

I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

I think it's just too much trouble to be dishonest and keep up with yourself.

Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.

Yes and no are soon said, but give much to think over.

If thou art wise, incline to truth; for truth, not the semblance, remains in its place.

The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.

Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.

I do not remember in my whole life I ever willfully misrepresented anything to anybody at any time. I have never knowingly had connection with a fraudulent scheme.

People do peculiar things in life and they do for whatever reason but I think one of the greatest crimes in life is when you lie.

By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another ... has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. ... makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.

A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.

I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity a deluded population can swallow.

A superior man may be made to go to the well, but he cannot be made to go down into it. He may be imposed upon, but he cannot be fooled.

A small lie, if it actually is a lie, condemns a man as much as a big and black falsehood. If a man will deliberately cheat to the amount of a single cent, give him opportunity and he would cheat to any amount.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

No one is wise or safe, but they that are honest.

Everyone seems to be running against a liar, but nobody seems to be one. Odd - I mean, the math doesn't work out.

Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.

Honesty is a virtue, but not the only one. If you're in a courtroom you need the whole truth and nothing but the truth; in the living room, sometimes you need anything but. Often.