But of all forms of injustice, none is more flagrant than that of the hypocrite who, at the very moment when he is most false, makes it his business to appear virtuous.
What it means
The worst kind of wrongdoing is the kind that dresses itself up as goodness. A hypocrite is most dishonest at exactly the moment he works hardest to look honest.
Cicero calls it the most “flagrant” form of injustice because it does two wrongs at once: the wrong itself, and the deception that hides it behind a show of virtue.
The context
Cicero wrote De Officiis (On Duties) in 44 BC as a letter to his son, setting out how to live well and meet one’s obligations. This sentence closes his long discussion of justice in the first book.
Just before it, he says there are two ways of doing wrong, “by force or by fraud,” and that both are beneath a human being: “fraud seems to belong to the cunning fox, force to the lion; both are wholly unworthy of man, but fraud is the more contemptible.” The hypocrite is the worst case of fraud. Then he ends: “This must conclude our discussion of justice.”
Why it matters
Open wrongdoing is at least visible: you know where you stand. Hypocrisy is harder to spot and does more damage, because it uses people’s trust in goodness itself as cover.
It’s also a test to turn inward. The gap between how we want to be seen and how we actually behave is where hypocrisy starts, and it starts small. Cicero’s line is a reminder to close that gap by changing the behaviour, not by polishing the appearance.
About Cicero
Roman statesman, lawyer, orator and philosopher, 106–43 BC
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on 3 January 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town southeast of Rome. He was a statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator and writer, and as consul in 63 BC he suppressed the conspiracy of Catiline.
In October and November of 44 BC, in under four weeks, he wrote De Officiis (On Duties), three books on how to live and meet one’s moral obligations, in the form of a letter to his son. It later became a moral authority in the Middle Ages and a standard school text. He was killed on 7 December 43 BC, at Formiae, on the orders of Mark Antony.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from De Officiis (On Duties), Book I, 41 (translated by Walter Miller, 1913), 44 BC.
We matched the quote word for word against Bill Thayer's LacusCurtius transcription of Walter Miller's 1913 Loeb Classical Library translation, at the end of Book I, section 41. Cicero wrote in Latin, and other translations word it differently. We last checked this on 3 November 2026.