Quotes About Ambition

Every day I realized I would not be a star.

I was a salsa dancer for the majority of my life, from, like, 7 to 17, and did the World Salsa Congresses. I realized that I wanted to continue obviously to be a performer. But in my household, being an actor and jumping into acting is not really accepted.

At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin.

In my mid 30's, after a decade or so of giving full time to the music thing and finding myself with about $10 in the bank and no assets other than my musical equipment, I realized I needed to get serious about making a living.

I started writing when I was 21. I was going to become an historian. And then I realized there was more to the world than just the past. I didn't want to spend my life in the library.

I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny's Child put out 'Independent Women,' and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

At one point that's all I cared about, being a pro athlete. But I realized I wasn't athletic enough.

Early in my investment-banking career, I realized I was on a path that others had set out for me.

When I graduated from UCLA, I actually started interviewing for banking jobs. But at some point I realized a career in banking felt more like a continuation of school than a passion.

I think I went into poli-sci because I knew there was a stage, plus I thought I wanted to help people, and I realized in poli-sci that if you want to be a politician you're either born into it, or you've got an amazing brain, which those are rare - and I don't have one.

One of the things I realized early in my career is that you do what you believe, in knowing that if you don't, you will never like yourself. When you compromise out of fear or ambition, it eats inside you.

While I was doing these plays in the beginning, I wasn't getting paid. I thought of it more as a hobby. Then I realized how seriously a lot of these people took what they were doing.

I mean, I guess I realized subconsciously that this is what I should be doing before I realized it, consciously. Verbally, I don't think I had committed to it, even though I was driving everywhere, every night, just trying to get on stage.

When I grew up I always wanted to act. Also, I wanted to be either a lawyer or a doctor. However, when I got to college and realized what those occupations entailed, I changed my mind real quick.

I really wanted to be a doctor, until my freshman year of college when I realized that while I was good at chemistry and biology, I really wasn't feeling challenged by it.

And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.

When I was growing up, I said I wanted to be a model, but people said I had no chance and when I realized my ambition, people in the business still continued to state negative stuff.

I've always had a hunger for realizing myself through my career.

You get to a point where you start realizing that what you've done is amazing and you're proud of it, but there's so much more to accomplish. So many projects get to a certain level and they become content, and that's all that they ever expected or wanted.

I decided I wanted to be a dancer. Juilliard was in walking distance from home, so I very stupidly went and applied, not realizing the money it would cost which my parents didn't have. It took a hundred dollars just to apply for a scholarship. But I made it.

Service is key. And as I have more on my plate, and I have more ambitions and more goals and things I want for myself, I'm realizing more and more how important it is to be a servant.

It's insidious how Hollywood warps your values without you even realizing that it's happening to you. You get a little whiff of success and it whets your appetite, and before you know it you're going right down the road they've laid out for you.

I don't really like the word 'dream' because that makes it seem like it's something that's never going to happen. Playing in the NBA, since Day 1, it's something that I've wanted to do and I'm realizing all my goals now.