I didn’t know what a stockbroker was when I was eight, but I would just tell everybody that’s what I was going to be.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

I’m trying to get to Mars before everyone else.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.

Just as I wanted to outdo everyone when I played, I had to outdo everyone when we were out on the town.

I want to be the greatest actor that ever lived, frankly. I’d love that. But I don’t need to be. I just want to be here. That’s it.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

When you are fitted in a racing car and you race to win, second or third place is not enough.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

Who does not desire such a victory by which we shall join places in our Kingdom, so far divided by nature, and for which we shall set up trophies in another conquered world?

I loved what I did. I could’ve been secretary of state for ever.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

My goal is to be number one in MMA.

You know, I’m trying to chase rings, and that’s all I’m about. So that’s where the conversation stops for me.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

I had this dream, and I really wanted to be a star. And I was almost a monster in the way that I was really fearless with my ambitions.

I always wanted more – more of everything.

I can’t deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being president, is alluring. And beyond that, it would be an opportunity to make a real impact on people’s lives on a global scale. But there are a lot of other things I want to do first.

I used to watch some F1 races but I was never straightaway thinking ‚that is what I want to do.‘

Often, in the real world, it’s not the smart that get ahead but the bold.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of ‚eternity‘; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book – what everyone else does not say in a book.

The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Instead of being concerned that you have no office, be concerned to think how you may fit yourself for office. Instead of being concerned that you are not known, seek to be worthy of being known.

When I was five I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn’t have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job.

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.

Big results require big ambitions.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

Stupidity and human incompetence are the great evils, not ambition and glory.

For me, I don’t want to cheat the game by saying, or kind of doing lip service by saying, I want to be the greatest ever. I want to be able to show it.

I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America. But it doesn’t mean I won’t run.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

In my heart, I’m confident I could make a good president.

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.