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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
“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
“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!
“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 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
“Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more easily by night.” George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“man is something that is to be surpassed.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“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
“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
“those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” Charles Bukowski, Post Office
“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 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
“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
“we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
“his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.” Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

Related topics

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

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)
John Green (1)
George Eliot (1)
Terry Pratchett (1)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)
Bob Dylan (1)
Thomas Jefferson (1)
Lao Tzu (1)
Henry Ford (1)
Thomas Aquinas (1)
Ambrose Bierce (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
Marilyn Monroe (1)

Related sources

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