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ambition quotes

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“Ambition is the immoderate desire of power.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“My ambition is handicapped by laziness.” Charles Bukowski, Factotum
“the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“Urge them while their souls are capable of this ambition, lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath of soft petitions, pity, and remorse, cool and congeal again to what it was.” William Shakespeare, King John
“Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“an ambitious man desires nothing so much as glory, and fears nothing so much as shame.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“Vimes had never mastered ambition. It was something that happened to other people.” Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” Charles Bukowski, Post Office
“in the long run . . . success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.” Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, 'There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.'” Marilyn Monroe, My Story
“The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
“I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world...” George Eliot, Middlemarch
“It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
“Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more easily by night.” George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“I didn't want to be anything anyhow. And I was certainly succeeding.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York; and all the clouds that lour'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” William Shakespeare, Richard III
“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels. How can man then, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?” William Shakespeare, Henry VIII
“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking...” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“people think I'm being modest, but it's quite the opposite: I'm thinking that I would do better today and so much better tomorrow.” Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words
“I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.” George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
“those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“man is something that is to be surpassed.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“But virtue's true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work: whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be a virtue, but ambition.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
“his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.” Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
“It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible.” Henry Ford, My Life and Work
“How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of nature!” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four

Related topics

success dreams power desire virtue leadership modesty vocations happiness nature man darkness poverty enemy youth dream stars sin pride spirituality

Related authors

William Shakespeare (5)
Charles Bukowski (3)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
George R. R. Martin (2)
Baruch Spinoza (2)
Oscar Wilde (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
George Eliot (1)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1)
Terry Pratchett (1)
John Green (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)
Bob Dylan (1)
Lao Tzu (1)
Thomas Aquinas (1)
Henry Ford (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
Thomas Jefferson (1)
Ambrose Bierce (1)
William James (1)

Related sources

Hamlet (2)
Middlemarch (1)
Ethics (2)
Factotum (1)
Tao Te Ching (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
Ham on Rye (1)
Notes on the State of Virginia (1)
My Life and Work (1)
Summa Theologica (1)
Richard III (1)
My Story (1)
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1)
A Dance with Dragons (1)
Henry VIII (1)
King John (1)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (1)
Chronicles, Volume One (1)