As a child, when asked what I would be, I usually said I was going to be a huntsman. A fine profession, truly!

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

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.

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

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

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

Some people want to win races. Other people want to be President of the United States.

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

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.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.

In high school, I majored in brick masonry. We had the wood shop, the machine shop, so I know about all that. I wanted to build buildings when I graduated from high school. I do know my way around that stuff.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

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.

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.

I was born to play Hercules. I have loved and honored the mythology over the years – since I was a kid. When I first broke into Hollywood, ‚Hercules‘ was one of the movies that I – not chased, because I didn’t have the power to chase anything – but always had in the back of my mind.

The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

Many novice real estate investors soon quit the profession and invest in a well-diversified portfolio of bonds. That’s because, when you invest in real estate, you often see a side of humanity that stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and saving money shelter you from.

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

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.

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.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

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.

Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man’s idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.

I am not solicitous to examine particularly everything here, which indeed could not be done in fifty years, because my desire is to make all possible discoveries, and return to your Highnesses, if it please our Lord, in April.

I plan on taking athletics as far as I can.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.

My goals are so high that I don’t have time to relax in any way, shape or form.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

As a young kid, I really wanted to be rich.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

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.

Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be in combat.

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

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

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.

As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.

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

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

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.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.