Quotes About Ambition

If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion—prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own.

All the giants of the spirit whom I've broken. I don't think anybody ever realized how much I enjoyed doing it. It's a kind of lust. I'm perfectly indifferent to slugs like Ellsworth Toohey or my friend Alvah, and quite willing to leave them in peace. But just let me see a man of a slightly higher dimension—and I've got to make a sort of Toohey out of him. I've got to. It's like a sex urge.

One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself.

No," said Toohey. "You ask what he'd do if he couldn't be an architect." "He'd walk over corpses. Any and all of them. All of us. But he'd be an architect.

Nathaniel Taggart had been a penniless adventurer who had come from somewhere in New England and built a railroad across a continent, in the days of the first steel rails. His railroad still stood; his battle to build it had dissolved into a legend, because people preferred not to understand it or to believe it possible.

Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they're hurrying because they are afraid. It's not a purpose that drives them, it's fear.

what's the most depraved type of human being?" "The man without a purpose.

They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

It is not proper for man's life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles dropping off like zeros behind him—man's life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station to—oh, stop it!

The status was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it. All that Dagny wanted of life was contained in the desire to hold her head as he did.

Whatever it was that others sought in life, their right to what they now felt was all the two of them wished to find.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I--I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.

I, I am the day after tomorrow.

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?

Life consist of motion with purpose

Don't you want to live?" "Passionately." He saw the snap of a spark in Mr. Thompson's eyes and smiled. "I'll tell you more, I know that I want to live much more intensely than you do. I know that that's what you're counting on. I know that you, in fact, do not want to live at all. I want it, and because I want it so much, I will accept no substitute.

I saw that any man's desire for money he could not earn was regarded as a righteous wish, but if he earned it, it was damned as greed. - Francisco d'Anconia

She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought -- and never worried about it again.

He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights, the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he wanted.

He was a man who had never accepted the creed that others had the right to stop him. He set his goal and moved toward it...

Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.

Here, we trade achievements, not failures—values, not needs. We're free of one another, yet we all grow together.