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Who really said it

For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues

Written by Marcus Tullius Cicero 106–43 BC · Roman statesman, orator and philosopher
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Cicero said it in court. The sentence comes from his defence speech Pro Plancio, delivered in 54 BC, at chapter 33, section 80, and this exact English wording is C. D. Yonge’s literal translation. The virtue under discussion is gratitude: the preceding sentence reads “while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than the being and appearing grateful.” The Latin, confirmed in the text on Latin Wikisource ↗, is haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum — literally “the mother of all the remaining virtues.”

Last verified 1 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues” Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Plancio 33.80 (54 BC), trans. C. D. Yonge — the virtue he is describing is gratitude; Latin: haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum

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Provenance

The source

Speech
Pro Plancio (Oratio pro Cn. Plancio)
Delivered
54 BC, defending Gnaeus Plancius on a charge arising from his election as aedile
Locator
Chapter 33 (XXXIII), section 80
Latin
haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum
Translation
C. D. Yonge (1812–1891), The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, vol. 3 (London: George Bell and Sons)

In truth, O judges, while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than the being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues. What is filial affection, but a grateful inclination towards one’s parents? 54 BC

Read directly from the Internet Archive scan of Yonge’s volume 3 ↗. The quoted line is the second sentence here; the first is what tells you which virtue he means.

Primary translation
Yonge’s Orations of Cicero, vol. 3 (Internet Archive)
The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, vol. 3, trans. C. D. Yonge

How we verified this

  • The English was read first-hand in the full text of Yonge’s volume 3 ↗, which contains the sentence verbatim: “For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues.” It sits under the chapter heading XXXIII, immediately after Cicero’s remark about “the being and appearing grateful.”
  • The Latin was checked independently against Pro Cn. Plancio on Latin Wikisource ↗, where the section marker 80 stands immediately before “haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum” — confirming both the wording and the locator.
  • Latin Wikisource dates the speech to 54 BC; Wikipedia’s Cicero article ↗ places its delivery between July and September of that year.
  • The popular one-line version was checked too, and it is not a translation of this sentence by anyone: see the fact-check below.
Public domain

Cicero died in 43 BC, so the Latin is long out of copyright. The English shown is C. D. Yonge’s translation; Yonge died in 1891 and this volume was published in the nineteenth century, well before the 1931 United States cutoff. Both the original and this translation are in the public domain, and the Internet Archive serves the volume in full.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

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

The version you have probably seen

The attribution is right. The wording usually is not.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others” Paraphrase

This is the form carried by the big quotation aggregators, and it is not Yonge’s sentence or any wording found in the volume read here. It silently moves the noun gratitude into the sentence from the clause before it, and drops “this one virtue.” The meaning survives the edit; the quotation does not.

Marcus Tullius Cicero Genuine

The sentence is securely his, in the Latin ↗ and in Yonge’s English ↗. Only the tidied-up one-liner is someone else’s work.

Cicero really did call this virtue the parent of all the others, and he really did mean gratitude — but he said it in a sentence, in a courtroom, and the slogan version was assembled later.

Context

Why it mattered

Cicero was defending the man who had sheltered him. When he fled Rome into exile in 58 BC, Gnaeus Plancius — then quaestor in Macedonia — took him in. Six years later Plancius stood accused over his election as aedile, and Cicero returned the favour in the only currency he had.

That is why the speech stops to argue that gratitude is the parent of every other virtue. It is not a detour. It is the defence: Cicero is telling the jury that a man who repays a debt is demonstrating the quality from which filial duty, patriotism, piety and friendship all descend — and that he is doing exactly that by standing up to speak.

There is nothing which I can esteem more highly than the being and appearing grateful.

Read the full story

The sentence that follows the quoted line shows how Cicero builds the claim. “What is filial affection, but a grateful inclination towards one’s parents?” — then good citizenship, then piety, then friendship, each recast as gratitude wearing different clothes. It is a lawyer’s argument rather than a philosopher’s: he is not proving gratitude is foundational so much as making it impossible for the jury to admire any virtue without admiring this one first.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Gratitude Character Wisdom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, vol. 3 (trans. C. D. Yonge)archive.org

The full Bohn-series volume containing Pro Plancio, scanned and searchable. The sentence is in chapter XXXIII.
Pro Cn. Plancio — Latin textla.wikisource.org

The complete Latin speech with section numbers. Section 80 carries “mater virtutum omnium reliquarum.”
Pro Plancioen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 54 BC trial of Gnaeus Plancius and Cicero’s reasons for defending him.
Ciceroen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the orator, 3 January 106 BC to 7 December 43 BC, and the dating of the Pro Plancio defence.
Charles Duke Yongeen.wikipedia.org

The translator (1812–1891) whose literal English version is the wording quoted here.
Ciceroen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced Cicero collection, useful for comparing translations of his better-known lines.

The author

About Marcus Tullius Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero

106–43 BC · Roman statesman, lawyer, orator and philosopher

Marcus Tullius Cicero (3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was Rome’s most celebrated advocate and, in the Republic’s final decades, one of its most exposed politicians. Pro Plancio belongs to his years after exile, and the defence is personal: Gnaeus Plancius had sheltered him in Macedonia when he fled Rome. The passage on gratitude is therefore not an abstract moral flourish — it is Cicero explaining to a jury why he is standing there at all.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Cicero, Pro Plancio 33.80, in The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, trans. C. D. Yonge, vol. 3 (London: George Bell and Sons). Latin text: Pro Cn. Plancio, sec. 80.

This verification page

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