"The beginnings of all things are small", is a famous Latin quote from which author?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC) was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. One of his many famous Latin quotes that have been memorialized is "Omnium rerum principia parva sunt", translated into English means "The beginnings of all things are small".

Cicero came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order considered the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.

His influence on the Latin language was so immense that the subsequent history of prose, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century, was said to be either a reaction against or a return to his style. Cicero introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary.

According to John William Mackail (1859-1945), a Scottish academic from Oxford University and reformer of the British education system, "Cicero's unique and imperishable glory is that he created the language of the civilized world, and used that language to create a style which nineteen centuries have not replaced, and in some respects have hardly altered."