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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"Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded."
"The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition."
"When I was in college, I had only one ambition that one day I would like to be a director."
"Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness."
"I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities."
"A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances, and families, And every bride's ambition satisfied."
"Pride went before, ambition follows him."
"Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him."
"Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition"
"You must put your head into the lion's mouth if the performance is to be a success."
"I play for high stakes and given an audience - there is no act too daring or too noble."
"This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors"
"... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement."
"This fulfils my ambition. I still have my father's robe as Chancellor. I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid office."
"That is Gladstone, the greatest statesman that ever lived. I intend to be a statesman, too."
"But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable."
"It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain."
"It's probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could "match" what I had done, never choked off my writing by competing with myself, or with anybody else for that matter. My ambition was absolutely centered on the work itself, never on what it would bring me, or "who" it would make me. I never cared about that at all."
"I started to notice that simpleness is divine. I think we all start trying to use very complex harmonies and rhythms and all that because of a certain kind of ambition. But I was always trying to create something simple."
"I think that "ambition" is a weird and often negatively used word."
