SELF-LOVE & AMBITION

Guide for Teachers & Students

Reading Selections:
Perpetuation Speech, Lincoln
On the Natural Aristocracy,Jefferson
Equality and Ambition, Tocqueville

Self-love and Selfishness, Rousseau
On Maganamity,Aristotle

Coriolanus, Shakespeare



Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path.…It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.Abraham Lincoln

Guide to unit 2

 

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