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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"The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or crook."
"The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet."
"Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good."
"I dread our own power, and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded... We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing, and hitherto unheard-of-power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin."
"If you overesteem great men, people become powerless. If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal. The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place."
"Forget that blind ambition, and learn to trust your intuition."
"The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become 'somebody,' and frankly, I don't have the least ambition to become anybody."
"Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things."
"May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is -- and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal."
"Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds."
"The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor."
"All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer."
"We must love stupid people better than ourselves; are they not the really unfortunate ones of this world? Do not people without taste and without ideal grow constantly weary, rejoicing in nothing, and being quite useless here below?"
"You have to be driven. You have to be focused. You have to be aware."
"I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep & a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies & sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office."
"Fears, even the most basic ones, can totally destroy our ambitions. Fear, if left unchecked, can destroy our lives. Fear is one of the many enemies lurking inside us."
"Comfort kills ambition. Get uncomfortable and get used to it in your pursuit of your goals and dreams."
"What great changes have not been ambitious?"
"The ambition of the present Labour government is that every worker in the country will have a greater than average income."
"Take ones adversity Learn from their misfortune Learn from their pain Believe in something Believe in yourself Turn adversity into ambition Now blossom into wealth"
