Esse quam videri

Esse quam videri is found in Cicero's essay On Friendship (Laelius de Amicitia, chapter 98).

Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt ("Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so").

Just a few years after Cicero, Sallust used the phrase in his Bellum Catilinae (54.6), writing that Cato the Younger esse quam videri bonus malebat ("He preferred to be good rather than to seem so").

Previous to both Romans, Aeschylus used a similar phrase in Seven Against Thebes at line 592, at which the scout (angelos) says of the seer/priest Amphiaraus: οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι θέλει (ou gàr dokeîn áristos, all' eînai thélei: "he doesn't want to seem, but to be the bravest").

Esse quam videri is the state motto of North Carolina, adopted in 1893.

" Esse quam videri " plaque on monument to Revolutionary War officer Joseph Winston , Guilford Courthouse National Military Park , Greensboro, North Carolina
Great Seal of North Carolina with the state motto Esse quam videri .