We are driven to doubt whether the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do evil instead of good.

A man with such a tongue as that of Cicero will make the listener believe almost whatever he will; and the advocate is restrained by no horror of falsehood.

In his profession alone it is considered honorable to be a bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause.
Cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has been accused of hypocrisy in consequence.

There is a passage in one of the dialogues, De Oratore, which has been continually quoted against him because the word "fibs" has been used with approval.

The orator is told how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white lies--"mendaciunculis."[135] The advice does not indeed refer to facts, or to evidence, or to arguments.