Daily Inspiration Quote by Cicero

A Roman lawyer-philosopher’s way of cutting moral grandstanding down to size: if a duty requires the impossible, it isn’t a duty at all. Cicero’s line sounds like common sense, but it’s also a weapon. It strips away the rhetorical trick of demanding perfection so you can later punish failure. In a culture where honor, office, and public reputation were currency, calling something an “obligation” carried real social force. Cicero insists that force has limits.

The intent is legalistic and humane at once. Roman ethics, especially in Cicero’s hands, is obsessed with what can be asked of a citizen and what a citizen can rightly promise. “Binding” is the key word: an obligation is not a mood or a pious wish, it’s a constraint that can be enforced by conscience, custom, or law. By tethering obligation to possibility, Cicero makes morality operational. He’s quietly arguing for standards that can guide action rather than merely decorate speeches.

The subtext is political. Late-republic Rome ran on factional accusations and impossible purity tests: be loyal to the Republic, be loyal to your patron, be loyal to your family, be incorruptible in a corrupt system. Declaring some obligations impossible is a way to refuse manipulative demands from rivals, demagogues, or even the state. It’s also a shield for imperfect people trying to act decently in bad conditions.

Contextually, this anticipates the later maxim “ought implies can.” Cicero isn’t lowering the bar; he’s defining responsibility so it can’t be inflated into a tool of control.