Top 100 Without Ambition Quotes
#1. 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
#2. A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm - it can creep, but it cannot fly.
Henry Ward Beecher
#3. 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
#4. The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.
Charles Simic
#5. I'm beginning to think that life is about passing moments and small celebrations. Without them there's only pain, fear, ambition, and, for some of us, foolish hope.
Kyra Davis
#6. Without a vision to guide our path, and without ambition that knows no limits, we can never build a bright future for generations to come.
Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
#7. An objective is an ambition, and life without ambition is ... well, aimless wandering.
Alfred Wainwright
#8. 'Chef' is a dish of arroz con pollo served with a smile but not much style. The critic in the film would give it a low grade, for agreeability without ambition.
Richard Corliss
#9. The most important gift anyone can give a girl is a belief in her own power as an individual, her value without reference to gender, her respect as a person with potential.
Emilie Buchwald
#11. Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.
Charles Baudelaire
#12. The life which, if i were still a man with pride, honor, ambition and so forth, would seem like the bottom rung of degredation. It's a negative reality, just like death
a sort of heaven without the pain and terror of dying.
Henry Miller
#13. News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned.
Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann
#14. A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it.
Henry Ward Beecher
#15. To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come.
Erich Jantsch
#16. I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad. And especially without any ambition to make a living ... My whole freedom working in photography comes because I say to myself, Let's see what is going on in this world. Let's find out. How do these people look?
Lisette Model
#17. People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions?
Howard Zinn
#18. If I had to get there without friends, I could do it. Had been doing it. I'd never met anyone who brought me somewhere I wanted to stay, looked at me and saw someone I wanted to be for good; anyone who was worth giving up the more I wanted down the line.
Tana French
#19. I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.
Rebecca Wells
#20. Great ambition without contribution is without significance.
The Emperor's Club
Steve William Laible
#21. The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity, or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he clutches without any reward.
Horace Mann
#22. In essence, I set myself the objective of doing what I feel is right without having any ambition.
Andrea Bocelli
#23. It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.
Sallust
#24. A dream without ambition is like a car without gas ... you're not going anywhere.
Sean Hampton
#25. Ambition is important. Of course you can't get anywhere without talent, but there are a lot of talented people. To succeed, you have to be the most ambitious talented person.
Natalie Massenet
#26. A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.
Steven Brust
#27. Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me...I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition.
Elena Ferrante
#28. On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#29. I'm a weak character, without guts or ambition. I caught the brass ring and it shocked me to find out it wasn't gold. A guy like me has one big moment in his life, one perfect swing on the high trapeze. Then he spends the rest of his time trying not to fall off the sidewalk into the gutter.
Raymond Chandler
#30. The women hailed in the bible as examples for us were exceedingly wise, clever, intelligent, capable, and quick-witted. They were not shackled to the home, brainless ans without ambition. But their ambitions were God-oriented and God-directed.
~ Jennie
Anna Sofia Botkin
#31. Without drive you will never get anywhere in life.
Habeeb Akande
#32. Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.
Alexander Hamilton
#33. Without ambition, no goal can be met.
Kya Aliana
#34. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive.
Pearl Bailey
#35. To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they control it, wish to influence its direction.
Theodore Zeldin
#36. Nothing great could ever be achieved, without personal force, determined spirit and self-confidence.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#38. Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,
the sweet, without the other side,
the bitter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#39. Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#40. To write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral. There, one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help; on scaffoldings, alone with one's consciousness.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#41. Live for each second without hesitation
Elton John
#42. High and holy ambition
to be a saint
is not opposed to holy humility
total reliance on God's grace. Exactly the opposite. Ambition without humility is ambition that fails. It is pride, which goes before a fall (Prov 16:18). Humility without ambition is false humility.
Peter Kreeft
#43. How good it felt to exist without pride or ambition. To live in hibernation.
Amelie Nothomb
#44. I would love to end the nuclear ambition of the Iranians without firing a shot, but you have to know who you're talking to and what they actually want, this is North Korea in the making.
Lindsey Graham
#45. Without ambition no conquests are made, and no business created. Ambition is the root of all achievement.
James A. Champy
#46. We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.
Upamanyu Chatterjee
#47. It was the face of a human being who'd been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.
Ryu Murakami
#48. It was better to live with disappointment and frustration than to live without hope.
Robert A. Heinlein
#49. Spending time with people without ambition is a self-destruction.
Amen Muffler
#50. The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.
Eric Hoffer
#51. Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition. As far back as I can remember I've been absolutely hag-ridden. I'd like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition.
Tallulah Bankhead
#52. The rhythm of researching and querying holds all the fascination, endorphins, and residual scarring of picking a scab. It's a habit I easily fall into but without more than surface level ambition driving it can turn into a haphazard, oozing mess.
S. Kelley Harrell
#53. If it awakens in us as a whole how important that is - the theme of how conquest and ambition are meaningless without contribution - I think then as a society we're in better shape. I hope people are inspired to be the best.
Rob Morrow
#54. If one characteristic of Lyndon Johnson was a boundless ambition, another was a willingness, on behalf of that ambition, to make efforts that were also without bounds.
Robert A. Caro
#55. Ambition is not what a man would do, but what a man does, for ambition without action is fantasy.
Bryant H. McGill
#56. My boyhood ambition was to be able to earn my own living, without the help of anybody, anywhere,
Herbert Hoover
#57. We must love stupid people better than ourselves; are they not the really unfortunate ones of this world? Do not people without taste and without ideal grow constantly weary, rejoicing in nothing, and being quite useless here below?
George Sand
#59. Ambition, while there was nothing wrong with it, was still a far cry from power. Ambition got you out of bed to make money. Power meant you could make money without ever leaving bed.
AlTonya Washington
#60. Intelligence without ambition is a bird without winds.
Salvador Dali
#61. Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Alexander Pope
#62. We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them.
Albert Camus
#63. Time is the only critic without ambition - John Steinbeck
Moll Molone
#64. He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#65. Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future.
Michael Moorcock
#66. It is the bareness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers. At times it seems enough to draw, without the distractions of color and mass. Yet it is an old ambition to make drawing and painting one.
Philip Guston
#67. Ambition without knowledge is like a boat on dry land -movie - Karate kid"What is the calculus of innovation?" "The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives our economic growth."
William R. Brody
#68. You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise ... guided by your own virtue and highest ambition
Philippa Gregory
#69. The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition.
Luc De Clapiers
#70. Ambition without direction is like milk without a cup.
Gregory Maguire
#71. She pressed the plunger down hard, in hope and without regret ... Krystal Weedon had achieved her only ambition: she had joined her brother where nobody could part them.
J.K. Rowling
#72. America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.
James Madison
#73. Has any psychological experiment yielded a more delightful suggestion than this one: that there is a part of the mind without ambition or information, which nonetheless is expert on what is beautiful?
Kurt Vonnegut
#74. Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.
H.G.Wells
#75. He seemed unaware of what was going on, stared out without hope or ambition, without worry, developing a quality devoid of qualities to get him through this life.
Kiran Desai
#76. I'm not God, but I'm working within my own means as an artist and a person, and I possibly have more power than God does, in whatever form he has, if he exists, because I can work without the overarching ambition of wanting to rule over everything. I can work just for the heck of it.
Raymond Pettibon
#77. (Men without ambition are boring)
And that attitude, mistress, is why the females of your kind continue to struggle for equality. And why they continue to fail.
Richelle Mead
#78. I hate what you represent."
...
"Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact.
"Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.
Jim Butcher
#79. The natural ambition of woman is through marriage to climb up, leaning upon a man; but those days are gone. You shall be great without the help of any man, just as you are.
Swami Vivekananda
#80. People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.
Margaret Mead
#81. No man, I suspect, ever lived long in the country without being bitten by these meteorological ambitions. He likes to be hotter and colder, to have been more deeply snowed up, to have more trees and larger blown down than his neighbors.
James Russell Lowell
#82. Market values are fixed only in part by balance sheets and income statements; much more by the hopes and fears of humanity; by greed, ambition, acts of God, invention, financial stress and strain, weather, discovery, fashion and numberless other causes impossible to be listed without omission.
Gerald M. Loeb
#83. What would rock and roll be without ambition, craziness, danger, and fun?
Pete Wentz
#84. The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit.
Samuel Johnson
#85. Only those with no ambition and the inability to truly understand power are happy without it. They live in their little bubbles, never suspecting that there is more in the world. They are content to just exist. I want to do more than exist; I want to create, to destroy, to evolve." ~Lorsan
Quinn Loftis
#86. Ambition is a commendable attribute, without which no man succeeds. Only inconsiderate ambition imperils.
Warren G. Harding
#88. Without Ataturk's vision, without his ambition and energy, without his astonishing boldness in sweeping away traditions accumulated over centuries, today's Turkey would not exist, and the world would be much poorer.
Stephen Kinzer
#89. My mind was not that of a conqueror, but that of a cow that spends its life chewing contentedly in the meadow of invoices, waiting for the train of eternal grace to pass by. How good it felt to exist without pride of ambition. To live in hibernation.
Amelie Nothomb
#90. These great historical figures we admire for their conquests, their drive, their ambition, and the progress they are said to have been responsible for. But would we have not been better off as a species without them?
Adam Nevill
#91. If you have ambition, you might not achieve anything, but without ambition, you are almost certain not to achieve anything.
Whitfield Diffie
#92. Without my mother's ambition, her drive, I doubt that on my own I would have pushed myself out of Pozzuoli and into the frightening world that was faraway Rome.
Sophia Loren
#93. Ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.
Russell Kirk
#94. I think there are lots of ways to exercise ambition and accomplish things using leadership without going into elected politics. So, categorically, I have no intention of going into elected politics. None.
Chris Hadfield
#95. Ambition without contribution is of no significance.
Kevin Kline
#96. You can't have a discussion about Israel and the region without including Iran and their nuclear ambitions.
Peter MacKay
#97. Love, desire, ambition, faith. Without them life's so simple, believe me.
Daniel Mainwaring
#98. My greatest ambition is to have a career without becoming a career woman.
Audrey Hepburn
#99. Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
Mary Oliver
#100. I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join if I tried.
Douglas Coupland
