Quotes About Ambition

Bay Area Weekly just named me Silicon Valley's Number One Spoiled Brat. Remember, we're talking about California. Think of all the other spoiled brats I had to beat out for that title. Vlad always says I should aim for the best.

and called you cousin while reaching around to put the knife between your shoulder blades. This contest was supposed to be so high and mighty — a chance to shape the future. But the nitty-gritty was more like a reality TV show called Who Wants to Be a Backstabber? It was getting more cutthroat by the hour. Were all Cahills so

A DRIVEN PERSON IS GRATIFIED (AND GRATIFIED TEMPORARILY) ONLY BY ACCOMPLISHMENT.

To understand what a person is, it is necessary always to refer to what he may be in the future, for every state of the person is pointed in the direction of future possibilities.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb.

For a man to successful, not only must he succeed but his friends must also fail.

After acquiring Texas, Polk deliberately started a war with Mexico because, as he later told the historian George Bancroft, we had to acquire California. Thanks to Polk, we did.

To want power is corruption already.

After politics, journalism has always been the preferred career of the ambitious but lazy second-rater.

I plainly lacked Wilkinson's doggedness in pursuing those commanders who might help me up in the world.

Worlds are there to be conquered." I was light but I meant what I said. We were living at a time when for the adventurous and imaginative man anything was possible. Bonaparte had inspired, no doubt in a bad way, an entire generation.

I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement and the Deuil du Roy Albert.

In the act of creation there is always, it seems, an awful selfishness.

Freedom, I thought, comes only to the successful

My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes [...] The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handing me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: 'Son- the world is waiting to hear from you'.

I begin to rant. I'm special, I have needs, I have a job to do—once I get my act together. I'm going to be important.

She didn't want to change just to be better. Though there was always better to aspire for. It was very confused.

You always knew what you wanted to be didn't you? He asked Edward. More or less. Smart moves, a gynecologist. Never false moves. I was different, I had goals but no direction. Like a map without roads, just places to be.

Remember always what you set out to get, and please don't settle for less.

big plans require big action