pickHis various letters are illuminating, his Philippic against Antony is furious & damning, and his expositions on Duties & Old Age are still relevant today. The style in his written letters & essays may be more accessible to modern readers than his speeches, which can get long in the tooth. But stick with it. As a window into Ancient Rome & into the mind of the most celebrated orator of his time, his insight is still penetrating & meaningful.
"Life's course is invariable - nature has one path only, and you cannot travel along it more than once. Every stage of life has its own characteristics: boys are feeble, youths in their prime are aggressive, middle-aged men are dignified, old people are mature. Each one of these qualities is ordained by nature for harvesting in due season." - from On Old Age
"Consider the paradox of a person who admits the wickedness of tyrannizing a country....but who nevertheless sees advantage in himself becoming its tyrant if he can....Who, in God's name, could possibly derive advantage from murdering his country? Of all murders that is the most hideous...even when its perpetrator is hailed, by the citizens he has trodden underfoot, as 'Father of his Country'."
I picked this up at a library book sale last week, and I‘m already finding it a great resource. I‘ve read two speeches which have helped give context to recent reads. First, “More African than American,” given by Malcolm X a week before his assassination, and then “We Shall Overcome,” an address Lyndon B. Johnson made to the House about a month later, in March 1965. The latter was depicted in Volume 3 of March by John Lewis.
"So everyone ought to have the same purpose: to identify the interest of each with the interest of all. Once men grab for themselves, human society will completely collapse."
"...neglect of the common interest is unnatural, because it is unjust... nature's law promotes and coincides with the common interest."
So even in Cicero's day, "competition [was] the law of the jungle, but cooperation [was] the law of civilization." (Pyotr Kropotkin)
#Graduation 👩🎓👨🎓
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"For honesty is not particularly virtuous when there is no one with the ability or ambition to corrupt it."
p. 122: 'The universe is so structured that things do not quite work out rightly if men are not diligent in their concern for others. The self cannot be self without other selves. I cannot reach fulfillment without thou. Social psychologists tell us that we cannot truly be persons unless we interact with other persons. All life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.'
pp. 112-113: '[The American people] have been persuaded to accept token victories as indicative of genuine and satisfactory progress.... ["Tokenism"] is a pallative which relieves emotional distress, but leaves the disease and its ravages unaffected. It tends to demobilize and relax the militant spirit which alone drives us forward to real change.'
