Ambition Quotes

Apparently, a week Japan was laughable; but a strong Japan was immediately transformed into the prime example of a Yellow Peril. Might Japan forever be stuck in a kind of no man's land between East and West, not allowed to assimilate into the international order of the Western nations as an equal, forever grouped with the countries of the East among which she felt herself superior, and respected fully by neither group?

~ Charles Emmerson

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.

~ Abraham Lincoln

He (William Cort) had some desire to be successful, but it did not burn so strongly in him that he was prepared to overcome his character to achieve it.

~ Iain Pears

You will see true character after a defeated ambition

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.

~ Terry Pratchett

Honor, More charged, 'is the religion of tragedy.' Emotions such as love, hate, ambition, pride, and jealousy, 'form a dazzling system of worldly morality,' which contradicts 'the spirit of that religion whose characteristics are charity, meekness, peaceableness, longsuffering, gentleness, forgiveness.

~ Karen Swallow Prior

Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will.

~ Brian L. Weiss

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

~ Alain De Botton

The best is the enemy of good.

~ Voltaire

Ambition strives. At first for goals, until it reaches them. Then for more, because it's insatiable.

~ Renzo Dante (Saligiare)

Too often we give up due to temporal challenge.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.

~ Pat Conroy

Some roses grow through concrete. Remember that.

~ Brandi L. Bates

Potential is an excuse to procrastinate,Ambition is a means to thrive.

~ Donovan

I am ambitious. I set goals; not because I am ungrateful for what I have, but because I am happy with who I am. I enjoy the experience of rising above my perceived limitations and discovering new levels of my capabilities.

~ Steve Maraboli

Facing the backside of the future is the only way to move forward

~ Benny Bellamacina

I'm a kindhearted but highly competitive pragmatist. When I seek to win something, I always make certain it's never at the expense of anything more serious than the inadequate efforts of others.

~ Jonathan Kieran

(...)Take your time, because thereisn’t a moment to spare,(...) That’s what Stein told me when I had to leave Menakfor the first time. It kind of means that wherever yourdestination is, now is the time to start working towards it,or you will never get there.

~ Daniel Z Hastings

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

~ Herman Melville

Thus, Marlowe posed the silent question: could aspiring Icarus be happy with a toilsome life on land managing a plough with plodding oxen having once tasted the weightless bliss of flight?

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Ambitions are like assholes, and they smell like flowers to the owner. I must be delusional. Give it up.

~ Rafi Zabor

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

~ Hafiz

This general eclipse of ambition and determination and fortitude, all of the very qualities on which I have prided myself, is ridiculous, and, I must admit, somewhat obscene.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

I resolve to do my very best in everything.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Everyone has to start somewhere. If you let people bring you down now, you’ll never know how high you could climb. And you owe it to yourself to try.

~ Michelle Madow

We were motivated by our mentors to go an extra mile.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

When I interviewed at Yale, the admissions committee asked me why they should let me into the program. I looked at them unblinking and said, 'Because I'm going to change the world some day. And I'm giving you the chance to say, We knew her when.

~ Sarah Thebarge

Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, I'll stop saying, It isn't fair about everything else.

~ Lois Lowry

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions(...)if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life.#Page no.134

~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Always strive to get to the top in life because its usually crowded at the bottom.

~ Habeeb Akande

If you think the reason you exist or go to school is just to satisfy your selfish ambitions, then you are of all men most miserable

~ Topsy Gift

Popularity makes no sense If your fame is a shame.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice . . . . Truth breaks free, science is popularized, and religion totters; soon it will fall, in the course of centuries--that is, tomorrow. . . . In good time we shall only have to deal with r

~ Georges Bizet

...ya can't get to Nevada on five bucks and a bad heart...

~ Dave Matthes

To all the boys, for when you become men: you'll leave women all throughout your life because they're holding you back, and even after she's gone she'll still weigh you down. To all the women: stay away from us men. We don't know anything about you, despite what we try to convince you of.

~ Dave Matthes

...people who don't live at least a little bit in fear, have nothing left to live for.

~ Dave Matthes

People will drive by their high school ten years down the road, just so they can pretend that thinking not much has changed is actually true. When really, everything has changed. The air smells the same, but the roads have cracked more. The roads have cracked so much they now look like the skin on a crocodile's back. And all the fields, green in the summers, golden in the autumns, have all been paved over with new reasons to never come back.

~ Dave Matthes

The door is crackedWe used to meetlike water does landnonot thatmore like when skin touches skinkissing fingertipsor when air escapes a lung and is felt across the worldI've leapt over cracks in sidewalksand swallowed away troublesome back painsthat could only be fixed with someone else's pillsWe met by your house one stray dayand you drove me to the baywhere we sat and kissed like it was yesterdayAnd here you told me that you loved meand that you always loved meand that you would always love methe wind blew and I held youYou rested your head on my shoulderand the wind blew warmLater, in your big red truck, we smoked some greenand I kissed you harderand held your breasts, and felt between your legsand with a gaspyou told me you were in love with meAnd then you drove me backand we promised it wouldn't be the endnot this timeThe quill and inkwell on your footI'm a writer and you are my greatest artI returned to my hell and dreamt of you once more

~ Dave Matthes

I never had a childhood. Not like the rest of them anyway. I had a starting point from which I have never stopped running.

~ Dave Matthes

The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become 'somebody,' and frankly, I don't have the least ambition to become anybody.

~ Frida Kahlo