Ambition quotes
2.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside ambition — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes."
"To be allowed to call her "Dora", to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition - I am sure it was the summit of mine."
"People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive."
"Contentment is wanting what you have. Ambition is wanting what another has. Progress comes from wanting what nobody has."
"I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'"
"Women have ever been the stumbling block and betrayers of ambition."
"A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart."
"Ambition will take you And ride you too far and Conservatism bring you to boredom once more Sit down by the river And watch the stream flow Recall all the dreams That you once used to know The things you've forgotten That took you away To pastures not greener but meaner."
"My ambition is to enjoy my life and to do exactly what I want to do. And I'll do that. I will be free."
"You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books."
"When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless."
"I love being a writer. I am very lucky my life's ambition turned out to be just as much fun as I thought it would be."
"But he hated to be sober. It made him conscious of the people around him, of that air of struggle, of greedy ambition, of hope more sordid than despair, of incessant passage up or down."
"I was never appalled by myself. I felt a little bit uneasy about certain things. But honestly I've learned to love myself and to see that in the midst of all my ambition and desire to succeed and my search for approval, I do give things to people. I bring some sort of happiness to their lives. So I'm not so hard on myself anymore."
"Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness."
"I was always a singer, it was nothing anyone planned on me doing for real, because it's an unusual thing. I was just sort of saying, even having modest ambitions to have a small career at singing, it's still really difficult to do that. Everyone wants to sing or act or whatever."
"All of us perform better and more willingly when we know why we're doing what we have been told or asked to do."
"If we don't start, it's certain we can't arrive."
"Acting was a way out at first. A way out of not knowing what to do, a way of focusing ambitions. And the ambition wasn't for fame. The ambition was to do an interesting job."
"The only ambition I ever had going into and committing to wanting to be an actor was to live my life."
