Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.”
“It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.”
Source: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
“Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.”
No. 3
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)
“Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.”
United States v. Wunderlich, 342 U.S. 98, 103 (1951)
Judicial opinions
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
Intimations of Immortality Stanza 11.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Le sage guérit de l'ambition par l'ambition même; il tend à de si grandes choses, qu'il ne peut se borner à ce qu'on appelle des trésors, des postes, la fortune et la faveur.
Aphorism 43
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 7 (p. 85)
Day of Affirmation Address (1966)
Context: All do not develop in the same manner, or at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a world of immense and dizzying change.
