To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

This sentiment is attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero in his dialogue *Orator* (46 BCE), written late in his career amid the political upheavals following Julius Caesar’s rise and the collapse of the Roman Republic’s traditional order. In *Orator*, Cicero reflects on the education and formation of the ideal speaker, arguing that eloquence depends not only on technique but on broad cultivation—especially knowledge of history, law, and civic life. The remark about remaining “always a child” if ignorant of the past fits Cicero’s larger program: Roman statesmen and orators should be shaped by memory of earlier generations and by the recorded experience of the community.

Cicero equates historical ignorance with perpetual immaturity: without awareness of what preceded us, we lack the perspective that turns private experience into civic wisdom. The “child” is not merely uninformed but unformed—unable to judge present events against longer patterns of human action. By describing life as “woven” into ancestors’ lives through historical records, the quote frames history as a connective tissue binding individuals to a larger moral and political inheritance. The implication is ethical as well as intellectual: remembering the past enlarges responsibility, deepens judgment, and situates personal ambition within the continuity of a community.