A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble
Not Cicero — actually Taylor CaldwellTaylor Caldwell1900–1985 · British-born American novelist
The wording is neither Cicero’s nor ancient. Wikiquote lists this exact passage in its Misattributed section ↗, sourcing it to Taylor Caldwell’s 1965 historical novel A Pillar of Iron (p. 451) and stating flatly that such lines “are not found in any of Cicero’s actual writings.” The words are Caldwell’s, written for her fictional Cicero; quote sites later reprinted them as if the real one had said them. Even the vocabulary gives it away — “bureaucrat” entered English in 1839 ↗, some nineteen centuries after Cicero’s death.
“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble” Not Cicero. "A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed…" is from Taylor Caldwell's 1965 novel A Pillar of Iron (Doubleday), where Wikiquote places it at p. 451. It appears in none of Cicero's surviving writings. — Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Marcus Tullius Cicero. Use the credit shown above instead.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Taylor Caldwell — British-born American novelist. Theme: "A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where it actually comes from
Work
A Pillar of Iron
Author
Taylor Caldwell (Janet Miriam Caldwell), 1900–1985
Published
Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1965 — xv + 649 pp.
Passage
p. 451, per Wikiquote’s citation
A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?
The block as it circulates
This is the full block as it travels online, and as Wikiquote records it ↗. Every Internet Archive scan of the 1965 Doubleday edition is lending-restricted and its search-inside is closed, so we were not able to read p. 451 ourselves — the page reference is Wikiquote’s, reported here as theirs.
Wikiquote’s Cicero page ↗ carries this exact wording in its Misattributed section, under a header stating the group “come from a novel about Cicero by Taylor Caldwell, and are not found in any of Cicero’s actual writings.” The citation given is A Pillar of Iron (1965), p. 451.
The same novel is the documented origin of a sister pseudo-Cicero passage: Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the budget-and-Treasury paragraph “was constructed by Taylor Caldwell for her 1965 novel ‘A Pillar of Iron’” (Doubleday, p. 483), and quotes a 1971 letter from a history professor: “the great bulk of her quotations are false.”
The vocabulary is anachronistic. Wikipedia ↗ credits the coinage of bureaucratie to Vincent de Gournay in the mid-18th century and dates the first known English use to 1818; Etymonline ↗ dates “bureaucrat” in English to 1839. Cicero had no such word available to him — that is our own reading of the dates, not a claim either source makes about this quotation.
The book itself checks out as described: the Internet Archive’s scan ↗ is the Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. edition of 1965, xv + 649 pages. It is lending-restricted, so we could not open p. 451 to confirm the passage there directly.
A Pillar of Iron was first published by Doubleday in 1965 — well after the 1931 line for United States public domain — and remains commercially in print: Open Road Media publishes the current ebook ↗. The passage is therefore in copyright, quoted here for identification and criticism. Cicero’s own works are long in the public domain, but that is irrelevant to this line: it is not his.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How it got pinned on Cicero
A novel about Cicero is one of the most efficient machines ever built for manufacturing Cicero quotes. Strip the quotation marks off a line of historical fiction, keep the character’s name, and it reads as a primary source.
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The name on itMarcus Tullius Cicero Fabricated
The passage is not in any surviving work of Cicero’s. Wikiquote files it under Misattributed ↗, with a header stating the quotes in that group “come from a novel about Cicero by Taylor Caldwell, and are not found in any of Cicero’s actual writings.”
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The vectorQuote-aggregator databases No source given
Sites such as AZQuotes ↗ carry the full block — vultures, vicious dog, “Who can trust such creatures?” — under the bare heading “Marcus Tullius Cicero,” with no work, no book, no translator and no citation of any kind.
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The vectorBlogs and political commentary In circulation by 2011
The patternTwo more ‘Cicero’ quotes from the same book Same novel
The budget-and-Treasury paragraph and the “treason from within” speech come from the same 1965 novel. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the budget passage “was constructed by Taylor Caldwell for her 1965 novel ‘A Pillar of Iron’” and reprints a 1971 historian’s verdict that “the great bulk of her quotations are false.”
Taylor Caldwell did the reading. She spent years on Cicero — the letters, the speeches, the sources — and then did what novelists do: she gave her character lines he never spoke, in a register close enough to the real thing that they pass. The result is that A Pillar of Iron has worked for sixty years as an accidental quotation mine. At least three separate passages from the book now circulate online with Cicero’s name on them, and this is the most quotable of the three.
The tell is the vocabulary. Cicero had plenty of words for the men who staffed Rome’s administration — scribes, publicans, magistrates — but not this one. Wikipedia dates the coinage of bureaucratie ↗ to the French economist Vincent de Gournay in the mid-18th century, with the first known English use in 1818; Etymonline puts “bureaucrat” in English at 1839 ↗. A complaint about bureaucrats is a complaint about a modern institution, in a modern word, wearing a toga.
“Bureaucrat” entered English in 1839. Cicero died in 43 BC.
The other pseudo-Cicero quotes from the same novel
The bureaucrat passage has two well-travelled siblings, both from A Pillar of Iron and both catalogued on Wikiquote’s Misattributed list ↗: the budget-and-Treasury paragraph (p. 483 in the 1965 Doubleday edition, p. 371 of the 1966 Collins British edition), and the “a nation can survive its fools… but it cannot survive treason from within” speech. The budget one is the best documented of the family — Quote Investigator’s 2013 investigation ↗ concludes it “was constructed by Taylor Caldwell for her 1965 novel ‘A Pillar of Iron’” and reprints a 1971 letter from a history professor reporting that the passage sits on page 483 “totally without documentation.” If you meet a Cicero quote that sounds like a newspaper column about modern government, check this book first.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Janet Miriam Caldwell, who wrote as Taylor Caldwell (and under the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner), was one of the most commercially successful popular novelists of the mid-20th century — more than forty books over a forty-three-year career, selling on the order of thirty million copies. Her speciality was the big researched historical novel: Dear and Glorious Physician on Saint Luke, The Earth Is the Lord’s on Genghis Khan, and in 1965 A Pillar of Iron, on Cicero and the republic he could not save. Her publisher still advertises the book as built on “hundreds of speeches, voluminous private correspondence, and ancient texts and manuscripts” — which is precisely why readers keep mistaking her invented dialogue for the historical record.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The real source (Chicago)
Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965). Wikiquote places this passage at p. 451 and lists it among quotations wrongly attributed to Cicero, noting it is not found in any of Cicero’s actual writings. Attribution to Cicero: fabricated.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-bureaucrat-is-the-most-despicable-of-men-though-he-is/