Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
The best interpreter of the law is custom.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Custom and tradition often shape the interpretation and application of law more effectively than written statutes.
This quote by Cicero emphasizes the importance of custom in understanding and interpreting the law. Rather than relying solely on written laws, Cicero suggests that societal practices and traditions can provide deeper insights and clarity in legal matters, acknowledging that human behavior and consistent customs often play a crucial role in how justice is administered and understood.
Themes
LawCustomTraditionInterpretationJustice
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about legal rights, I would use this quote to highlight the significance of societal norms in interpreting the law.
More from Marcus Tullius Cicero
All quotes →Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defence can actually be just.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Similar quotes
There seem to me a great many blessings which come from true poverty and I should be sorry to be deprived of them.
Teresa Of AvilaRead
Everything we do these days - our lust for ever more comfort, pleasure, and distraction, our refusal to engage with the mandates of reality, our fidelity to cults of technology and limitless growth, our narcissistic national exceptionalism - all of this propels us toward the realm where souls abandon all hope.
James Howard KunstlerRead
Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.
Noam ChomskyRead
For me, the problem of time is linked up with that of death, with the thought that we inevitably draw closer and closer to it, with the horror of decay.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
Every human being is called to solidarity in a world battling between life and death
Ignacio EllacuriaRead
Even if it’s a dumb story, telling it changes people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinetisimal change ripples outward —ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter —maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.
John GreenRead