Ambition quotes

Ambition

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

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Ambition quotes (page 6 of 114)

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Pindar Poet
Ambition

"There is a mortal breed most full of futility. In contempt of what is at hand, they strain into the future, hunting impossibilities on the wings of ineffectual hopes."

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Elvis Presley Singer, Actor
Ambition

"Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine. Ain't nowhere else in the world where you can go from driving a truck to cadillac overnight"

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Carl Sandburg Poet, Biographer
Ambition

"An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and find me.""

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Octavia Butler Author, Novelist
Ambition

"I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive."

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Johnny Depp Actor, Producer
Ambition

"Throughout my lifetime I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost barely enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent."

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Bruce Lee Martial Artist, Actor, Director
Ambition

"I don't know what is the meaning of death, but I am not afraid to die - and I go on, non-stop, going forward with life. Even though I, Bruce Lee, may die some day without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do and what I've done, I've done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can't expect much more from life."

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Niccolo Machiavelli Political Philosopher, Historian
Ambition

"It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they, are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied."

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Marie Curie Physicist, Chemist
Ambition

"It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science."

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C. S. Lewis Writer, Scholar
Ambition

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us."

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Aleister Crowley Occultist, Writer
Ambition

"The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka."

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Jiddu Krishnamurti Philosopher, Speaker
Ambition

"There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness."

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