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ambition quotes

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“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
“My ambition is handicapped by laziness.” Charles Bukowski, Factotum
“Ambition is the immoderate desire of power.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Vimes had never mastered ambition. It was something that happened to other people.” Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
“we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
“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
“those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“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
“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
“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
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” Charles Bukowski, Post Office
“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
“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
“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
“his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.” Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
“I didn't want to be anything anyhow. And I was certainly succeeding.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“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
“man is something that is to be surpassed.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“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
“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
“Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more easily by night.” George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Related topics

nature honor success dreams power virtue leadership desire modesty poverty man happiness darkness summer enemy pride dream laziness spirituality stars

Related authors

William Shakespeare (4)
Charles Bukowski (3)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
George R. R. Martin (2)
Terry Pratchett (1)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)
Thomas Jefferson (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
Lao Tzu (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
John Green (1)
Ambrose Bierce (1)
Marilyn Monroe (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
Henry Ford (1)
Baruch Spinoza (1)
Thomas Aquinas (1)
William James (1)
Viktor E. Frankl (1)

Related sources

Hamlet (2)
Factotum (1)
Post Office (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
Tao Te Ching (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
Ham on Rye (1)
My Story (1)
Summa Theologica (1)
Notes on the State of Virginia (1)
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1)
Richard III (1)
My Life and Work (1)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (1)
King John (1)
A Dance with Dragons (1)
Ethics (1)
The Sign of the Four (1)
Jude the Obscure (1)