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

Related topics

nature honor dreams success virtue power leadership desire modesty vocations venality poverty happiness man sin darkness want youth pride stars

Related authors

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

Related sources

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