Political Quotes

Cicero: “Nay; can what is inexpedient for the state be expedient for any individual citizen?”

On the record44 BC
Nay; can what is inexpedient for the state be expedient for any individual citizen?
Said by
Cicero

Editor's note · Context

From a philosophical treatise on moral duty, Cicero poses a rhetorical question about the relationship between individual and state welfare.

Share

More from Cicero

44 BC

But I quit life as I would an inn, not as I would a home.

gutenberg.org
44 BC

But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.

gutenberg.org
44 BC

But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame.

gutenberg.org
44 BC

Nay, if some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and once more to be crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should I in truth be willing, after having, as it were, run the full course, to be recalled from…

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation