Q0100

Cicero

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Any man can err; only a fool persists in error.
Thinker Cicero
School Roman Philosophy
Source Philippics XII.5
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Philippics XII.5, within the tradition of Roman Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Cicero's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Cicero. (n.d.). Any man can err; only a fool persists in error. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0100

MLA: Cicero. “Any man can err; only a fool persists….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0100.

Chicago: Cicero. “Any man can err; only a fool persists….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0100.

Same thinker

More from Cicero

  1. Philosophy is the cultivation of the soul.
  2. We are not born for ourselves alone.
  3. Friendship cannot exist except among the good.
  4. The best weapons of old age are the arts and practices of the virtues.

All quotations by Cicero

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme