ambition quotes

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.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

People say ‚I want to be rich‘. The question is, ‚Are you willing to do what it takes?‘

In the world today many people rightfully feel entitled to have success and the good things in life, but they usually understand it will require sacrifice and hard work.

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

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.

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.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

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

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.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

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

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

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

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.

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

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

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

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 always wanted more – more of everything.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

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.

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.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.

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

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

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

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

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.

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

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.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

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.

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

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.

You just wait. I’m going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

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.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

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.

Dream in a pragmatic way.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

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

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

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.

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.

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?

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

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.

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

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

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

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.