festina lente
Make haste slowly — move quickly, but never faster than you can do it properly.
“Festina lente — quickly, but get it right.”
“Her advice to the new team was festina lente: two weeks of planning would save two months of repairs.”
“Festina lente is not a compromise between speed and care but a claim about which produces which, and every organisation that has rebuilt the same system twice has learned it the expensive way.”
Suetonius says that Augustus thought nothing less becoming in a commander than haste and rashness, and that he was constantly quoting a Greek proverb — hurry slowly. Festina lente is the Latin of it, and it was the closest thing the first emperor had to a management philosophy: better to be sure than fast, because a battle refought is more expensive than a battle delayed.
The phrase acquired a set of emblems that carried it through the Renaissance. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer, took a dolphin coiled round an anchor as his device — speed wrapped around stability — and the Medici used a tortoise with a sail.
English uses festina lente wherever the two halves of the instruction are genuinely in tension: ship it, but do not ship it broken.
Horace, Virgil and Cicero, still quoted in the original.
- 01
carpe diem (idiom)
Seize the day — make use of today rather than counting on tomorrow.
Horace, Odes 1.11.
- 02
tempus fugit (idiom)
Time flies — said when far more of it has gone than you expected.
Virgil, Georgics.
- 03
memento mori (idiom)
A reminder that you are going to die, and that this should change how you spend the time.
The warning in the chariot.
- 04
in vino veritas (idiom)
People say what they actually think once they have had a drink.
Pliny the Elder.
- 05
to err is human (idiom)
Making mistakes is part of being a person, so a mistake alone is not a scandal.
Cicero, then Pope.
- 06
homo homini lupus (idiom)
Man is a wolf to man — people are dangerous to each other.
Plautus, Asinaria.
Last updated August 3, 2026