Ambition quotes

Ambition

2.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Ambition quotes (page 2 of 114)

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Leo Tolstoy Novelist, Philosopher
Ambition

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power."

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Johnny Depp Actor, Producer
Ambition

"As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition, too."

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Sheryl Sandberg Business Executive, Author
Ambition

"We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests."

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Joe Hill Labor Activist, Songwriter
Ambition

"Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?"

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Mahatma Gandhi Political Leader
Ambition

"In battling against untouchability, and in dedicating myself to that battle, I have no less an ambition than to see a full regeneration of humanity."

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John Adams Founding Father, Politician
Ambition

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."

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Pythagoras Philosopher, Mathematician
Ambition

"Some are slaves of ambition or money, but others are interested in understanding life itself. These give themselves the name of philosophers , and they value the contemplation and discovery of nature beyond all other pursuits."

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Arthur Conan Doyle Writer, Physician
Ambition

"How sweet the morning air is! ...How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!"

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Thaddeus Stevens Politician
Ambition

"I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: 'Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.'"

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Royal Robbins Climber, Author
Ambition

"My ambition was to become the best climber and I never did. I think that goal was a wrong goal. A better one is to put more emphasis on enjoyment and on getting a rounded experience and on things like friendship, rather than on sheer achievement."

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Sheryl Sandberg Business Executive, Author
Ambition

"Women don't take enough risks. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal.' We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap."

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Edwin Louis Cole Author, Speaker
Ambition

"The pleasures of sin exist. We cannot deny them. But we also dare not deny what follows in their wake: a voracious appetite, inflamed with eroticism, demanding more indulgence more often until a degenerative spiral captures the soul and drags us on a never ending descent into deeper patterns of immorality and illicit behaviour... Lust goes beyond the sexual. Lust can show itself in a variety of forms: covetousness, gluttony, drunkeness, power hunger, or unbridled ambition, to name a few"

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Jane Austen Novelist
Ambition

"It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine."

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