Life & Wisdom Quote by Thomas More

A small, almost throwaway line that quietly stages a whole political philosophy: get me to the top, and don’t worry about what happens after. “See me safe up” is both request and test of loyalty, the kind of phrase that turns a relationship into a transaction. Safety is framed as vertical. The danger isn’t in the fall itself, but in the failure to secure elevation in the first place.

The slyness lands in the second half: “for in my coming down, I can shift for myself.” It’s a promise of self-sufficiency disguised as reassurance. More’s ear for courtly speech catches how ambition talks when it wants plausible deniability. The speaker insists they won’t be a burden once the climb is done, but the subtext is darker: once power is obtained, the obligations that got you there are conveniently severed. “Shift” signals improvisation, survival, a readiness to wriggle out of the very alliances just forged.

In More’s world, rising wasn’t merely career advancement; it was exposure. Tudor politics treated offices like perches above a trapdoor. Everyone knew the arc: favor, prominence, vulnerability, then the inevitable “coming down.” The line works because it acknowledges that cycle without naming it, smoothing brutality into manners.

There’s also a faint moral aftertaste. More, later cast as principled martyr, understood how easily “I’ll manage my own fall” becomes permission for others to help push. The wit is in the calmness: the most ruthless intentions often arrive in the politest packaging.