“Injustice may be committed in two ways: by force or by fraud; both are most base — fraud seems to belong to the cunning fox, force to the lion.”Cicero · Despre îndatoriri · -44 · cartea I, paragraful 41
Whoever wins by force or deceit doesn't just err once, but sinks below the human condition.
Cicero distinguishes two shortcuts people take when they want an outcome without justice: force or fraud. Both replace persuasion and fairness with tools that belong to beasts or foxes, not to mature human beings. That is why both are base even when they succeed: the victim suffers once, but the wrongdoer steps down from human dignity every time. A clerk who fakes a document and one who blackmails a colleague look different, yet they did the same thing: they abandoned justice.
Cicero notices something subtler here: force and trickery are not just two bad methods, but two shortcuts that skip the hard part of living together — persuasion. Convincing someone takes time, arguments, patience. Forcing or deceiving them jumps over all of that. That is why both are a form of laziness, not just of malice. Think of a seller who hides a car's defect instead of honestly explaining the price and the risks: he saved time, but lost exactly what makes him a partner rather than a predator. The question that follows: what remains of a success won without persuasion?
Why it matters It applies to any workplace or public-life dilemma: if force or cheating is the only path to a result, the result is no longer worth the price.