Ambition quotes
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside ambition — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"In college I had to major in something, so I was like, "Okay I like art history, so I will major in that." I never really had any ambitions to work in museums or anything, though."
"If I sat down in any room, I'd have as much to learn from anybody in that room as they'd have to learn from me. If I sit down and just really listen and hear who you are and what you have to say, what you fears are, what your ambitions are, and what your vision is, I have just as much to learn from you as you have to learn from me."
"It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books. [] It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: he made the books and he died."
"We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone 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 in ambition"
"But 'tis common proof, that lowliness is young ambition's ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; but when he once attains the upmost round, he then turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the vase defrees by which he did ascend."
"Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow."
"Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up Thine own life's means!"
"Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars That make ambition virtue! O, farewell! Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!"
"Love and meekness, lord, Become a churchman better than ambition: Win straying souls with modesty again, Cast none away."
"The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair."
"It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word."
"My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing."
"Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?"
"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities."
"Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point."
"And if we now cast our eyes over the nations of the earth, we shall find that, instead of possessing the pure religion of the Gospel, they may be divided either into infidels, who deny the truth; or politicians who make religion a stalking horse for their ambition; or professors, who walk in the trammels of orthodoxy, and are more attentive to traditions and ordinances of men than to the oracles of truth."
"It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence."
"General irregularities are known in time to remedy themselves. By the constitution of ancient Egypt, the priesthood was continually increasing, till at length there was no people beside themselves; the establishment was then dissolved, and the number of priests was reduced and limited. Thus among us, writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found, and then the ambition of writing must necessarily cease."
"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."
"It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer."
