Quotes About Ambition

Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to. . . . When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.

People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.

Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer.

They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.

They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.

Boy, said the old man at last, in five years, how would you like a job selling shoes in this emporium? Gosh, thanks, Mr. Sanderson, but I don't know what I'm going to be yet. Anything you want to be son, said the old man, you'll be. No one will ever stop you.

Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why

We all do what we do.

Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it.

I discovered very early on that if you wanted a thing, you went for it — and you got it. Most people never go anywhere, or want anything — so they never get anything.

The more I did, the more I wanted to do.

The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

Where would you like to go? What would you really like to do with your life?

Because I wanted to do, I did. Where I wanted to feed, I fed.

What does your character want, what is his dream, what shape has it, and how expressed?

Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadow are always longer. Only at noon can a man fit in his own shoes, his own best suit, for a few brief minutes. But we're in a new age where we can think up a Big Idea and run it around in a machine. That makes the machine more than a machine, doesn't it?

It's the rich who have dreams and rockets!

Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar's lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.

The principal passion in politics is greed. That is what pulls you down.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.

You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something — and you can't. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little — not a thing in the world — not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.

Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.