Top 100 Quotes About Ambition
#1. As she sustained wound after wound ... the fairy should have fallen, but instead, she danced. This was Titania, the Fairy Queen.
Hiro Mashima
#2. As men advance in life, all passions resolve themselves into money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this.
Benjamin Disraeli
#3. If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.
Charles Caleb Colton
#4. I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.
Louise Mensch
#5. Ambition is the incentive that makes purpose GREAT and ACHIEVEMENT greater!
Orison Swett Marden
#6. My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It's my mother's ambition to be a celebrity.
Stephen Sondheim
#7. With many sovereign states, with no system of law enforceable among them, with each state judging its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire - conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur.
Kenneth Waltz
#8. I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in, or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.
John McCain
#9. He began to view writing as a petty ambition, a frivolous and indulgent whim, creativity itself as the pathology of the very young or very stupid.
Galt Niederhoffer
#10. If there is to be no satisfaction in pleasure, none in wisdom, none in ambition, none in the golden mean, what then? Ah, where then? In duty. In doing right because it is right.
Lyman Abbott
#11. I didn't have that intense ambition to be a musician or an actress. I just enjoyed it. And by enjoying it, because I loved it, it enabled me to get better at what I was doing, because there was a love behind it.
Lauryn Hill
#13. In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed.
Gustave Flaubert
#14. My life is great. It's just not exceptional. And there was a time when it could have been." "You killed your ambition, didn't you?" "It died of natural causes. Of neglect.
Blake Crouch
#15. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#16. I was utterly without worldly ambition because I knew that all that was needed for a rich, full life was a few shillings a week with which to buy SF magazines and beer.
Bob Shaw
#17. If I had one singular galvanizing ambition in life, I would try to reverse engineer toward it, but I don't.
Chelsea Clinton
#18. I never had ambitions to see how rich I could get. I got a lot of contemporaries that that's their ambition, and I don't know very many of them that are happy.
Carroll Shelby
#19. Ambition is best tempered with self-knowledge!
William Hague
#20. Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, I'll stop saying, "It isn't fair" about everything else.
Lois Lowry
#21. If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters.
E.F. Schumacher
#22. There's nothing worse than a leader who lacks ambition.
Ruth J. Simmons
#23. Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now.
Jordin Sparks
#24. I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
Zadie Smith
#25. They are young, full of ambition and dreams; they are still unable to imagine that there might be a story in the world in which they are not the main characters.
Juan Gomez Barcena
#26. It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business
David Ogilvy
#28. A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm - it can creep, but it cannot fly.
Henry Ward Beecher
#29. Let not ambition take possession of you; love the friends of the people, but reserve blind submission for the law and enthusiasm for liberty.
Marquis De Lafayette
#30. The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth and the death of self.
Simon Barnes
#32. Throughout my lifetime I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost barely enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent.
Johnny Depp
#34. The Champions League is a big ambition, and all the footballers want to play in it; it is a very important competition.
Fernando Torres
#35. You may delay your ambition, but never forget your ambition.
Amit Kalantri
#36. Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision.
Werner Herzog
#37. As a woman, you feel that you shouldn't want to better yourself against others. Ambition has become such an ugly word, hasn't it?
Rosamund Pike
#38. It will be up to Congress to check the president's ambition of committing the U.S. to an international green scheme that will produce little or no return.
John Barrasso
#39. Europeans should be patient and try to find a formula to resolve this nuclear issue. We are determined to remove any ambiguities over our nuclear ambitions and also protect our right.
Hamid-Reza Assefi
#40. Every man must play the part of his ambition. If you are trying to be a successful man, you must play the part.
Orison Swett Marden
#41. My biggest ambition when I was younger was to appear on stage at what was then Nimrod, which is the theatre where my father used to take me on Sunday afternoons to see matinees. The most extraordinary things used to occur on that stage.
David Wenham
#42. Ambitious people understand intelligent people far better than intelligent people understand ambitious people; therefore, ambition will always triumph over intelligence. Once you appreciate this reality, civilization becomes clearer and unfortunately, more distressing.
D.A. Blankinship
#43. Employing your imagination is the first step to the fulfillment of any dream.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#44. Ambition can take the place of everything - even sex.
Bruce Forsyth
#45. run. He is spoilt and his ambition is the work of an idle and over-reaching mother.
Kiran Nagarkar
#47. You know, I think when I reflect on it, I think there's certainly a sense of history. When you have ambitions to play this game, you want to be one of the best ever, and you want to play so well and be so effective that you want people to remember your name 100 years from now.
Marcus Allen
#48. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
Anonymous
#49. Women Who Seek Equality With Men Lack Ambition
Patty Sheehan
#50. Before we got married, I had tremendous ambition. Once we got married and I started having children, then I just thought that that was my real life. Steve was definitely more ambitious than I.
Eydie Gorme
#51. Be not content with the common place in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart.
William Jewett Tucker
#52. Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#53. I totally enjoy what I'm doing and bringing joy into people's lives. To me, and if I can bring one second of joy into a child or a grown-up's life, then I have achieved my lifetime ambition.
Michael Jackson
#54. ["Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery;
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#55. Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
Petrarch
#56. Reach your ambition as high as the skies! Dream it as high as the skies! Because if you're fell, you're gonna fall among of the stars!!
Sukarno
#57. How do you make it to the top when all you have is ambition and talent? You believe in yourself and surround yourself with other idealistic and talented friends that fuel each other and push against the establishment to take you seriously.
Tamra Davis
#58. Certainly the best times were when I was alone with mathematics, free of ambition and pretense, and indifferent to the world.
Robert Langlands
#59. I don't want anyone to feel they can't achieve their ambitions if they are dyslexic.
Mollie King
#60. I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.
George W. Bush
#61. The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.
Charles Simic
#62. Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.
Emile M. Cioran
#63. The finest of athletes have, along with skill, a few more essential qualities: to conduct their life with dignity, with integrity, with courage and modesty. All these, are totally compatible with pride, ambition, determination and competitiveness
Donald Bradman
#64. Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme.
Emile Hirsch
#65. Once we take our eyes away from ourselves, from our interests, from our own rights, privileges, ambitions - then they will become clear to see Jesus around us.
Mother Teresa
#66. What do you mean I have to wait for someone's approval? I'm someone. I approve. So I give myself permission to move forward with my full support!
Richelle E. Goodrich
#67. I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.
Ian Fleming
#68. 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.
Paul Auster
#69. How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?
John Brunner
#70. Giving in to the forces of low ambition would be an act of climate appeasement. This is our Munich moment.
Chris Huhne
#71. Drugs are the enemies of ambition and hope - and when we fight against drugs we are fighting for the future.
Bob Riley
#72. Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
Saint Augustine
#73. Above average intelligence has always run in my family. Ambition, however, has always walked with a limp.
Jeff MacNelly
#74. I've known people with exceptional talent - and some have wasted it. Ambition spurs a man on.
Geoffrey Boycott
#75. There's sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren't being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable.
Criss Jami
#76. We need spirited, energetic and strong young people whose hearts are filled with life, enthusiasm, zeal and dynamism; whose souls are full of ambition, aspiration and vigor and have great goals, rising and aspiring to reach them until they eventually arrive at their destination.
Hassan Al-Banna
#78. Some people may call me a nerd. I claim the label with pride.
Bill Gates
#79. One thing all stage mothers share is an overpowering ambition for their daughters.
Lawrence Welk
#80. Few are more unhappy than those who have great ambition, but little energy to urge it into activity.
Norm MacDonald
#81. As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.
Edward Weston
#82. I find myself really privileged to be able to go in and look at a set that the likes of Hollywood can provide, and say, 'My God, look at the craftsmanship in this; look at the ambition in it, the scale of it.'
Brendan Gleeson
#83. Who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone.
Who had nothing, who wanted everything.
Lana Del Rey
#84. The world's deadliest mercenaries choose to serve you, the whispers say, because they have yet to meet me.
Marie Lu
#85. All it wants is to explode.'
'Nice to have an ambition in life, I suppose.
Philip Reeve
#86. Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking, squealing, gucci little piggy
Radiohead
#87. I've become a captive of my own ambitions.
Patsy Cline
#88. I really never had any ambitions to be a standup comic. I was talked into it by guys that I used to work out with.
Joe Rogan
#89. Professional ambition is expected of men but is optional - or worse, sometimes even a negative - for women. "She is very ambitious" is not a compliment in our culture.
Sheryl Sandberg
#90. The family gives you ambition, and ambition is one of the hindrances for enlightenment. It gives you desires, it gives you a longing to be successful, and all these things create your tensions, your anxieties: how to be a celebrity?
Rajneesh
#91. Of lunacy,
Innumerous were the causes; humbled pride,
Ambition disappointed, riches lost,
And bodily disease, and sorrow, oft
By man inflicted on his brother man;
Sorrow, that, made the reason drunk, and yet
Left much untasted. So the cup was fill'd.
Robert Pollok
#92. I am as one
Who doth attempt some lofty mountain's height,
And having gained what to the upcast eye
The summit's point appear'd, astonished sees
Its cloudy top, majestic and enlarged,
Towering aloft, as distant as before.
Joanna Baillie
#93. Never be too absorbed by your own ambitions to encourage those of your family.
Wes Fesler
#94. What is ambition but desire of greatness? And what is greatness but extent of power?
Thomas Higgons
#95. Cent percent swadeshi gives sufficient scope for the most insatiable ambition for service and a satisfaction of every kind of talent.
Mahatma Gandhi
#96. There are two types of mistakes: mistakes of ambition and mistakes of sloth.
Tim Ferriss
#97. Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.
Ida Tarbell
#98. The British have always been madly overambitious, and from one angle it can seem like bravery, but from another it looks suspiciously like a lack of foresight.
Ben Aaronovitch
#99. When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.
Garrison Keillor
#100. She's a mystery, a cipher, something nearly extinct these days: a person not controlled by ambition or greed or a crass need for attention, but by a desire to experience life completely and to make life a little easier for the people around her
Rebecca Miller
