Ambitious quotes

Ambitious

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

321 quotes
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero Politician, Philosopher, Orator

"A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within....for the traitor appears not to be a traitor...he rots the soul of a nation...he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist."

Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone Filmmaker, Screenwriter

"I knew that one day I would come to this point that I would make something so outrageous and so ambitious that... it'd be that Don Quixote feeling, that I'd have to tilt at a windmill. Sometimes you've got to do it. That's the only way you can do things."

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Ambitious quotes (page 1 of 17)

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Lucian Freud Painter
Ambitious

"It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious."

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David Hume Philosopher, Historian
Ambitious

"Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery."

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Morrie Schwartz Professor, Author
Ambitious

"Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time–then you might not be as ambitious as you are."

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Vaclav Klaus Politician, Economist
Ambitious

"As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism."

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C. S. Lewis Writer, Scholar
Ambitious

"If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary."

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Vaclav Klaus Politician, Economist
Ambitious

"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity, is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

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Theodor Herzl Journalist, Writer, Political Activist
Ambitious

"I incline to an aristocratic republic. This would satisfy the ambitious spirit among our people. We shall learn from the historic mistakes of others in the same way as we learn from our own; for we are a modern nation and wish to be the most modern in the world."

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Ban Ki-moon Diplomat
Ambitious

"Saving our planet requires you to be ambitious in what you aim, and, equally, in how hard you work to reach your goal."

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Natalie Portman Actress, Director, Producer
Ambitious

"I was definitely different from the other kids... I was more ambitious. I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked really hard. I was a very serious kid."

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Leonardo da Vinci Artist, Scientist, Inventor
Ambitious

"It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world."

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