Cicero wrote it, and the locator is narrower than most sites say. The sentence sits in Orator — his last book on rhetoric, finished late in 46 BC and addressed to Marcus Junius Brutus — at section 120, in a passage urging the ideal speaker to learn history as well as law. The Latin, confirmed in the text on Latin Wikisource ↗, reads Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum — literally “to not know what happened before you were born, that is to be always a boy.” The translator of the popular English wording is unidentified, which is a separate question from whether Cicero wrote the thought: he did.
“Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever” Marcus Tullius Cicero, Orator 120 (46 BC) — “Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum.” Translator of this English wording unidentified. Via quotle.info
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Provenance
The source
Work
Orator (Orator ad M. Brutum)
Written
Latter part of 46 BC — Cicero’s last work on rhetoric, addressed to Marcus Junius Brutus
Locator
Section 120 — cited as Orator 120
Latin
Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum
Translation
Translator unidentified for this exact English wording — see the fact-check below
Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a previous age?
The second sentence is part of the same thought and is almost always dropped when the line is quoted. Both sentences are rendered here as Wikiquote’s sourced Cicero page ↗ gives them.
The Latin sentence sits between the section markers for 120 and 121 in the full Latin text of Orator on Latin Wikisource ↗, immediately after Cicero’s praise of Atticus for compressing seven hundred years of record into one book.
Wikiquote’s sourced Cicero page ↗ files this exact English wording under Orator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC) at section 120 — the same work and the same locator as the Latin above.
Wikipedia’s article on the Orator ↗ dates the work to the latter part of 46 BC and describes it as the continuation of a debate with Brutus begun in Brutus, written earlier the same year — two different books, one year, one dedicatee, which is how the citations get swapped.
Watson’s nineteenth-century Bohn volume Cicero on Oratory and Orators ↗ prints De Oratore and Brutus in full. A full-text search of it does not return this sentence, because the Orator is not among the treatises that volume contains.
Cicero’s Latin is unquestionably in the public domain — he died in 43 BC. The English wording shown is a different matter: no source consulted names its translator or the edition it came from, so quotle.info asserts no rights status for it rather than guessing. The public-domain English editions of Cicero’s rhetorical works that are easiest to find (Watson’s Bohn volume, linked above) contain De Oratore and Brutus but not the Orator, which is part of why this sentence circulates without a named translator.
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
What people get wrong about this one
Nobody disputes that Cicero wrote this. What travels wrongly is where it comes from and who put it into English — so this section is a citation fact-check, not a debunk.
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The workCicero’s BrutusMiscited, not misattributed
Quotation sites routinely cite the line as Brutus, chapter 34, section 120. Brutus and Orator are two separate treatises, both written in 46 BC and both addressed to Marcus Junius Brutus — Wikipedia notes that the Orator continues a debate begun in Brutus ↗. The sentence is in the Orator.
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The workDe OratoreMiscited, not misattributed
Others give De Oratore, an earlier and much longer dialogue from 55 BC, sometimes describing it as “another name for” the Orator. It is not. Watson’s Bohn translation ↗ prints De Oratore complete, and this sentence is not in it.
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The translatorUnattributed Translation, not the original
The English wording in circulation is nobody’s identified translation. It is not Loeb’s and it matches none of the public-domain versions checked here, so quotle.info names no translator and claims no copyright status for the English.
✓The thought is Cicero’s, written late in 46 BC at Orator 120 — verifiable in the Latin ↗. The work is the Orator, not Brutus and not De Oratore.
Context
Why it mattered
Cicero is not making a general point about education here. He is listing what a complete public speaker has to carry in his head, and he has just finished insisting the man know civil law, because — as Cicero asks — what is more disgraceful than taking on a legal case while being ignorant of the law? History is the next item on the list.
The compliment that sets it up is to his friend Atticus, who had squeezed seven hundred years of Roman record into a single book and so, Cicero says, lightened the work for everyone. The famous sentence is the reason that book matters: a man who knows nothing before his own birth has only his own lifetime to think with.
For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a previous age?
Read the full story
The Orator was written in the latter part of 46 BC, three years before Cicero was killed, and is his last word on rhetoric. It answers a request from Marcus Junius Brutus — the same Brutus — and continues an argument the two had started in Brutus earlier that year.
That shared dedicatee and shared year are the whole reason this quotation is so often filed under the wrong title. The two books sit next to each other in editions, in catalogues and in the same breath, and a section number copied from one lands plausibly in the other.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
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 last decades, one of its most exposed politicians. He wrote the Orator in 46 BC, with Caesar in power and his own political life effectively over, turning back to the craft he had spent his career practising in the courts. He was killed on the proscription lists three years later.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Cicero, Orator 120 (46 BC): “Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum.” Latin text: Orator, sec. 120 (Latin Wikisource). The translator of the English wording shown is unidentified; see the rights note.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever’?” Last verified 2 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/not-to-know-what-happened-before-you-were-born-is-to-be-a/