Quotes About Ambition

Let's begin by stating our objective," I said. "If in six months you could have your fondest wish, what would it be?

Hawthorne finally found his life's calling. "I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases; nor a minister to live by their sins; nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels," he wrote passionately to his mother. "So I don't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author.

New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight -- a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision. [first-line bold by author] [2002] p.23

America ... loves the successful sociopath and thinks it's normal to dream of becoming like him.

Don't let small thinking cut your life down to size. Think big, aim high, act bold. And see just how big you can blow up your life.

We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal." —Robert Brault

However, because ambition is easily disguised in Christian circles and couched in spiritual language (the need to fulfill the Great Commission and expand the church), the dysfunctions that drive Christian leaders often go undetected and unchallenged until it is too late.

Y)ou've got to do more than what's expected if you want to get ahead.

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen

I am born hungry. Ravenous. I want to eat the world, and I can never be satiated.

That's what I admire about youngish Italians, the slow dimunition of ambition, the recognition that the best is far behind them.

Being a full prof at the University of Texas at El Paso meant living like a managing director at Barclays. Barry had always wondered why people who were just upper-middle class in New York chose to stay there, given that they could live like minor dictators in the rest of the country. "You're negative arbing yourself," he used to say.

He knows that people marked for greater things are often the least happy of all.

It's okay to give up on a dream. The majority of dreams don't come true. Our whole country is learning as much.

She told me I was a nerd, but a nerd who made her laugh. I told her I wanted to do more than make her laugh. She told me I should be thankful for what I had. I told her she should move to New York with me. She told me she was probably a lesbian. I told her my work was my life, but I still had room for love. She told me love was out of the question.

There's something outrageously simple about extending yourself toward a goal the way a plant seeks the sun's rays or a gopher the crunch of easy soil beneath his paws, and then getting exactly what you want , sunshine or some prized tuber.

But what kind of profession is this, writer?" my mother would ask. "You want to be this?" I want to be this.

The best fiction is the fiction of self-delusion. It contrasts the banality of our self-made fictions against the hopelessness of the world as it really is. The worst thing that we can tell you at a place like Princeton is that you can have it all." He scanned the small group around him and brushed the leathery buttons holding his vest tightly over his large body. "Well," he said. "You can't.

Shiva wouldn't have to accomplish as much as Arturo. He was a rich man's son. He could go to Skidmore or launch a clothing line made out of hemp, but his parents needed a sign that he knew he was a part of their tight, illustrious family.

You want the secret off my succes; my recipe? I have always brought the same care to making an adventure novel, a serialized novel, that others would bring to the making of a poem. My ambition was to raise the level of this much maligned genre.

He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar

Faliure is not an option.

President Kennedy made his speech at Rice University that confirmed his commitment. This time I was more attuned to his words. On a makeshift stage erected on the fifty-yard line at Rice Stadium, Kennedy repeated the question that many had raised: "Some have asked, why go to the Moon? One might as well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why sail the widest ocean?

It's easy to become anything you wish . . . so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul.