Julius Caesar Quotes Checked: What He Said, What Shakespeare Wrote, and What the Sources Report

Start hereCaesar wrote two books of his own, and some famous lines are in them. Yet "Et tu, Brute?", the line often given as his last words, comes from a play written more than 1,600 years after his death. So which lines did he say?

Plenty of famous lines are credited to Julius Caesar. A few are in his own books. More come from writers who lived long after him. Several of the best known come from Shakespeare’s play.

Here are 19 of them. For each one we give the oldest source we found, with the book and chapter, so you can look it up yourself. For his life, see our Julius Caesar summary.

01The verdicts

All ✕Doesn't hold up◐Partly✓Holds up?Can't confirm▶Fiction

01 "Experience is the teacher of all things"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ✓Holds up His own writing, Civil War 2.8.3, in an aside about a siege. Evidence ↓

02 "Men willingly believe what they wish"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ✓Holds up His own writing, Gallic War 3.18.6, with the qualifier "in most cases". Evidence ↓

03 "It is easier to find men who will die than men who will endure pain"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ◐Partly In his Gallic War, but spoken by Critognatus, a Gallic noble at Alesia. Evidence ↓

04 "Veni, vidi, vici"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ✓Holds up Reported two ways: a triumph inscription (Suetonius) or a letter to Amantius (Plutarch). Evidence ↓

05 "I came, I saw, I conquered" was about GaulCredited to Popular story ✕Doesn't hold up It was about a quick victory over Pharnaces at Zela, in Pontus. Evidence ↓

06 "Alea iacta est"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ◐Partly Suetonius gives Latin Iacta alea est; Plutarch says he called out in Greek. Evidence ↓

07 "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ◐Partly Both biographers report something like it; neither has the proverb's words. Evidence ↓

08 "I would rather be first here than second at Rome"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ✓Holds up Plutarch reports it, said while passing a poor village in the Alps. Evidence ↓

09 "I am Caesar and no king"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ✓Holds up Suetonius reports the reply; Plutarch tells the same moment. Evidence ↓

10 "It is better to die once than to live always in fear of death"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ◐Partly Plutarch and Velleius report the idea in their own words, not these. Evidence ↓

11 "If you must break the law, do it to seize power"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ◐Partly Cicero says Caesar often quoted these lines; they are Euripides', from the Phoenissae. Evidence ↓

12 His last words were "You too, my child?"Credited to Popular story ?Can't confirm Suetonius gives it only as what some wrote; Dio prefers the silent version. Evidence ↓

13 "Et tu, Brute?"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ▶Fiction Shakespeare's line, Act 3 Scene 1; the Latin tag was already on the stage. Evidence ↓

14 "Beware the Ides of March"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ▶Fiction In the play the Soothsayer says it to Caesar; the warning itself is older. Evidence ↓

15 "Cowards die many times before their deaths"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ▶Fiction Shakespeare gives it to his Caesar, in Act 2 Scene 2. Evidence ↓

16 "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ▶Fiction Cassius says it to Brutus in Shakespeare's play. Evidence ↓

17 "I love the name of honour more than I fear death"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ▶Fiction Brutus says it in Act 1 Scene 2 of the play. Evidence ↓

18 "There is a tide in the affairs of men"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ▶Fiction Brutus says it in Act 4 Scene 3 of the play. Evidence ↓

19 "The art of communication is the language of leadership"Credited to Credited to Julius Caesar ?Can't confirm Not found in Caesar's books, Suetonius or Plutarch's Life of Caesar. Evidence ↓

6 of 19 shown · a mix of every verdict Show all 19 ▾

02Who wrote down Caesar’s words

Two books of Caesar’s own survive: his Commentaries on the war in Gaul and on the civil war. Lines from those are as close as we can get to his own words.

Most of the famous sayings come from later writers.

• Velleius Paterculus, an army officer, put together a short history of Rome for a friend’s consulship in AD 30.

• Plutarch, from Chaeronea in Boeotia, lived from about AD 45 to 120.

• Suetonius seems to have written mostly under the emperors Trajan and Hadrian (AD 98–138), and was for a time Hadrian’s secretary.

• Cicero was alive when Caesar was killed. On Duties, written after the murder, was one of his last works, as Walter Miller’s introduction explains. He was no friend of Caesar’s: in it he calls Caesar a man “who was ambitious to be king of the Roman People and master of the whole world” (3.83).

• Cassius Dio, a senator from Bithynia who was twice consul, was born sometime between AD 155 and 164. Earnest Cary’s introduction notes that the date depends on when he is thought to have entered the senate. His history runs down to AD 229, the year of his second consulship.

Caesar died in 44 BC. Apart from Cicero, they all wrote decades or centuries later. When a line is credited to Caesar, two questions help: who reported it, and how long after?

03Lines from Caesar’s own books

1. “Experience is the teacher of all things”

Holds up This is Caesar’s own writing, in the Civil War 2.8.3: ut est rerum omnium magister usus. It is an aside in his account of a siege, where the soldiers found by experience that their small brick shelter would be more useful raised into a tower.

The siege was at Massilia, where book 2 opens. W. A. McDevitte’s translation reads “experience is the best master in everything”. It is not a free-standing motto.

2. “Men willingly believe what they wish”

Holds up Caesar, Gallic War 3.18.6: fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. W. A. McDevitte’s translation reads “in most cases men willingly believe what they wish”. He is explaining why an enemy fell for a trick.

The short version drops fere, “in most cases”. Caesar’s own line is a little more careful.

3. “It is easier to find men who will die than men who will endure pain”

Partly The line is in Caesar’s book, but he gives it to someone else. It comes from a speech by Critognatus, a noble of the Arverni, among the Gauls besieged at Alesia (Gallic War 7.77.5).

Our reading: the Latin is Caesar’s prose, since he wrote the speech down, but he gives the view to an enemy and does not make it his own. That is why it is partly, not fully, his.

McDevitte translates it: “Those who voluntarily offer themselves to death are more easily found than those who would calmly endure distress”.

Caesar says he included the speech for its “singular and detestable cruelty” (7.77.2). Critognatus goes on to urge the besieged to live on the bodies of those too old to fight, rather than surrender.

04Lines his biographers report

4. Veni, vidi, vici

Holds up It belongs to Julius Caesar and his quick victory at Zela, but two ancient writers report it differently.

Suetonius says that in his Pontic triumph he “displayed among the show-pieces of the procession an inscription of but three words, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered,’” (37.2). The point was “the speed with which it was finished”.

Plutarch says it was a letter: “to one of his friends at Rome, Amantius, Caesar wrote three words” (50.3). He adds that in Latin the three words share the same ending. Both are reports; neither quotes a document by Caesar that survives.

Our page on what veni, vidi, vici means goes through the phrase word by word.

5. “I came, I saw, I conquered” was about Gaul

Doesn't hold up The three words were about a short war in Pontus, not Gaul or Britain. Caesar beat Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great, near Zela. Perrin’s note dates it to July of 47 BC.

Suetonius says Caesar won “within five days after his arrival and four hours after getting sight of him” (35.2). The three words, he says, were about that speed.

6. Alea iacta est, “the die is cast”

Partly The ancient sources disagree on the words and the language, and neither has the familiar word order.

Suetonius has Caesar at the Rubicon say “Iacta alea est” (“The die is cast”, in Rolfe’s translation, 32). Plutarch tells it differently. Caesar was “calling out in Greek to the bystanders these words only, ‘Let the die be cast,’” (Perrin’s translation, Pompey 60.2).

The same Greek saying turns up in a comedy by Menander, quoted by Athenaeus, where it is about getting married. Our page on what alea iacta est means sets the versions side by side.

7. “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion”

Partly Both biographers report something like it, but not in these words.

Clodius had slipped, dressed as a lute-girl, into the house where Pompeia, Caesar’s wife, was holding a women’s festival. Men were not allowed to attend it. Caesar divorced her. Asked at the trial why, he answered, in Plutarch’s version, “I thought my wife ought not even to be under suspicion” (10.9).

Suetonius has “the members of my family should be free from suspicion, as well as from accusation” (74.2). Plutarch adds that some thought Caesar said it honestly, and others that he said it to please the people. Neither ancient writer has the exact proverb.

8. “I would rather be first here than second at Rome”

Holds up, as reported. Plutarch (Caesar 11) tells it with a “We are told”: Caesar said it while crossing the Alps and passing a poor village. His companions had joked about whether even there people fought over office.

9. “I am Caesar and no king”

Holds up, as reported. Suetonius says Caesar gave this reply when the people hailed him as king (79.2). J. C. Rolfe notes a pun: Rex, “king”, was also a Roman family name. Plutarch tells the same moment: Caesar “said that his name was not King, but Caesar” (60.3).

10. “It is better to die once than to live always in fear of death”

Partly Two ancient writers report the idea, each in his own words.

When his friends thought he should have a bodyguard, Plutarch says, Caesar refused, “saying that it was better to die once for all than to be always expecting death” (57.7).

Velleius says Caesar “kept reiterating that he would rather die than live in fear” (2.57.1). Both report what he said rather than quote it, and neither has the popular wording.

11. “If you must break the law, do it to seize power”

Partly Caesar is reported to have repeated it, but the lines are by Euripides.

Cicero says Caesar “used to have continually upon his lips the Greek verses from the Phoenissae”. He gives them in his own Latin: Nam si violandum est ius, regnandi gratia, violandum est (On Duties 3.82).

Cicero names the speaker in the play, Eteocles. Suetonius repeats Cicero’s report (30.5). The second half, in Walter Miller’s translation, is “be God in all else feared”.

12. “You too, my child?”

Can't confirm Suetonius says Caesar died “uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke”. He adds that “some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, ‘You too, my child?’” (82.2).

Cassius Dio prefers the silent version: “This is the truest account” (44.19.5).

Plutarch has Caesar cry out in Latin at the first blow, “Accursed Casca, what does thou?” (66.8). He gives him nothing to say to Brutus. The Greek teknon means “child”; the “my” is the translator’s.

05Lines from Shakespeare’s play

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a play, and its speeches are his. The Folger Shakespeare Library says he may have written it as the first of his plays to be performed at the Globe, in 1599.

13. “Et tu, Brute?”

Fiction The line is Shakespeare’s, in Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1. In the Project Gutenberg text it reads “Et tu, Brute?—Then fall, Caesar!” Caesar dies on those words.

The Latin tag was already familiar on the English stage: The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of York, printed in 1595, has “Et tu, Brute? wilt thou stab Cæsar too?”. For what the ancient writers report, see line 12. Our page on what Et tu, Brute means follows the line from the ancient sources to the stage.

14. “Beware the Ides of March”

Fiction, as something Caesar said. In the play the Soothsayer says it to Caesar, in Act 1 Scene 2, and Brutus repeats it when Caesar asks who spoke. The Soothsayer says it again, and Caesar replies, “He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass.”

The warning is ancient; the line is Shakespeare’s. Plutarch writes that a seer warned Caesar of great peril on the Ides of March, and Suetonius names the soothsayer Spurinna.

Velleius Paterculus, writing in AD 30, says the soothsayers had warned Caesar “carefully to beware the Ides of March” (2.57.2, F. W. Shipley’s translation of ut diligentissime iduum Martiarum caveret diem). The four-word line, spoken to Caesar by a Soothsayer, is Shakespeare’s.

15. “Cowards die many times before their deaths”

Fiction Shakespeare gives this line to his Caesar, in Act 2 Scene 2, followed by “The valiant never taste of death but once”.

The idea is close to what Plutarch and Velleius report Caesar saying (line 10). The words are Shakespeare’s.

16. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars”

Fiction, and not Caesar’s line in the play either. Cassius says it to Brutus in Act 1 Scene 2, in a speech about Caesar’s rise. It ends “But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

17. “I love the name of honour more than I fear death”

Fiction Brutus says it in Act 1 Scene 2: “For let the gods so speed me as I love / The name of honour more than I fear death.”

18. “There is a tide in the affairs of men”

Fiction Brutus again, in Act 4 Scene 3, arguing that the army should march to meet the enemy at Philippi. The line goes on: “Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”.

06A line with no source we could find

19. “The art of communication is the language of leadership”

Can't confirm We searched Caesar’s two books, Suetonius’s Life and Plutarch’s Life of Caesar, in the translations listed below, and found nothing like it. Until someone shows an ancient source, it is safer not to credit it to Caesar.

07How to check a Caesar quote yourself

1. Look for a reference, such as “Suetonius 82.2” or “Plutarch, Caesar 50”. The first number is the chapter, the second the section. A line that comes with none is worth a closer look.

2. Open the text. Suetonius’s Life is on LacusCurtius in Latin and English, and so is Plutarch’s Life of Caesar in English. Caesar’s own books are at The Latin Library and, in English, on Project Gutenberg.

3. Search a few distinctive words. Try more than one wording, because translations differ. Plutarch’s “Came, saw, conquered” is Suetonius’s “I came, I saw, I conquered”.

4. Check who is speaking. Caesar’s books contain other people’s speeches, and Shakespeare’s play gives many famous lines to Brutus and Cassius.

5. Note the date. A line reported a century later is a report, not a recording. Say who reported it.

08Quick answers

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10Quick quiz

How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• Every line was checked in the texts listed below: Caesar, Suetonius, Velleius and Cicero in Latin and in the named English translations; Plutarch and Dio in the named English translations, with the Greek passages noted below.
• Velleius, Plutarch and Suetonius wrote long after Caesar died, so the lines they give are reports of what he said.
• For the line about communication we searched the English translations of Caesar's two books (McDevitte), Suetonius (Rolfe) and Plutarch's Life of Caesar (Perrin) and found no source. We could not trace where it first appears.
• The Greek of Plutarch and Athenaeus on the die is cast, and the Greek of Suetonius 82.2, were read for our page on famous Latin phrases and are reused here.

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11Sources