Quotes About Ambition

It's not about where you are today; it's about where you're going to be. We have to remind ourselves: This is where I am, but it is not where I'm always going to be.

You will move the direction in which you're pointed. If you are always looking back to the past, reliving your failures or even your successes, no wonder you're not moving forward very quickly. You can either spend time sitting around, thinking about the "glory days," or you can get about the business of finishing first in your life right now. The idea is to stay pointed forward, to focus your attention on the direction you'd like to go.

What thief does not fight to hold what he has?" "One that has something better," said Locke.

What thief does not fight to hold what he has?" "One that has something better" - Locke Lamora to the Gray king

I think I can stand up through!" He demonstrated the questionable optimism of of this pronouncement by falling on his face.

I just want nice, neat little jobs from you, Lamora. I want a purse here, a sausage there. I want you to swallow your ambition, shit it out like a bad meal, and be a circumspect little teaser for about the next thousand years. Can you do that for me? Don't rob any more yellowjackets. Don't burn any more taverns. Don't start any more fucking riots. Just pretend to be a coarse-witted little cutpurse like your brothers and sisters. Clear?

ESPARA, FORMERLY a seat of prestige only one step below Therim Pel itself, had descended from its imperial years the way some men and women descend into middle-aged lethargy, discarding the vigor and ambition of youth like a suit of clothes that can no longer be wriggled into.

You're one-third bad intentions, one-third pure avarice, and one-eighth sawdust. What's left, I'll credit, must be brains.

If it's such a fine place, why did Basanti build his own?" "The Old Pearl is perfectly adequate," said Moncraine. "Basanti built to flatter his self-regard, not fatten his pocketbook." "Because businessmen like to spend lots of money to replace perfectly adequate structures they can use for nearly nothing, right?

challenging me to identify who I wanted to become and why.

Settle in your mind what you want, what your goal is with your writing, and then take steps to reach that goal.

You've learned that pride if often the first victim of ambition

At any stage of the game — regardless of your educational level, upbringing or age — you can decide to leapfrog the pettiness of people to achieve your goals. When you make a commitment and have the courage to stick with it through thick and thin, you'll double your income — and more.

This one step - choosing a goal and sticking to it - changes everything

The big challenge is, we have to constrain and mold our ambition level without losing the spark. The stuff I lose sleep over nigh is, how are we doing on this? We want to make progress as fast as possible without exploiting human resources. How do you move faster without killing people? How do you build a community around the project without losing design integrity? And how do we get on an arc that moves from benign dictatorship to more small-group democracy?

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and then I got this call from a casting director in Los Angeles. She remembered me from something years before, and she called my mom wanting me to audition for this thing.

When I was younger I wanted to be a big movie star who'd get to be funny on talk shows and then I wanted to retire and write science fiction.

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing asserting itself with ever growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

I'd like now and into the future to play a bigger role not only in Wisconsin and the Midwest, but nationally. I'd like to have an impact.

Well has it been said: the man obsessed Is a cock of the walk in a hurry towards the worst.

Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too. —HENRIK IBSEN (1828–1906), The Master Builder

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.

I always wanted to be the strongest man on the field. Most of the time, they said I was lifting too much but I didn't believe in that at all.

I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no time for writing, which is why I went to Europe to live in 1961.