Q0384

Cicero

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

We are not born for ourselves alone.
Thinker Cicero
School Roman Philosophy
Source De Officiis I.22
Theme Morality
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with De Officiis I.22, 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 morality, 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.). We are not born for ourselves alone. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0384

MLA: Cicero. “We are not born for ourselves alone..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0384.

Chicago: Cicero. “We are not born for ourselves alone..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0384.

Same thinker

More from Cicero

  1. Any man can err; only a fool persists in error.
  2. Philosophy is the cultivation of the soul.
  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 morality

  1. It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.
  2. No one errs willingly.
  3. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  5. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Browse the morality theme