Quotes About Ambition

He had no college dreams and hence no proximity to the challenge of new faces and ideas.

Susan Hawley, I suspect, is a woman much in demand in the rarefied zone of political nightlife in this city. She is the ultimate ornament to be hung from the arm of important political figures or captains of industry during quiet dinner meetings. In her commercial dealings, hundred-dollar bills appear in considerable quantity in her purse the morning after, like fishes and loaves in the basket after the Sermon on the Mount.

that born leaders don't fit the corporate mold, that I was destined for bigger things than hitching my wagon to someone else's star.

The leader of another crack gang once told Venkatesh that he could easily afford to pay his foot soldiers more, but it wouldn't be prudent. "You got all these niggers below you who want your job, you dig?" he said. "So, you know, you try to take care of them, but you know, you also have to show them you the boss. You always have to get yours first, or else you really ain't no leader. If you start taking losses, they see you as weak and shit.

Here's a guess: anybody who bothers to change his name in the name of economic success is—like the high-school freshmen in Chicago who entered the school-choice lottery—at least highly motivated, and motivation is probably a stronger indicator of success than, well, a name.

The second lesson to be drawn from Kobayashi's success has to do with the limits that we accept, or refuse to.

Todos desean triunfar en un campo extremadamente competitivo en el que, si alcanzan la cima, les pagan una fortuna (por no hablar de la gloria y el poder que comporta).

He most probably knew, already as a child, that he would accomplish great deeds of daring, and the trappings that would someday result were to be thought of as no more than diplomas. Medals were merely signatures upon the histories of dutiful deeds, which would have transpired with or without them.

It's not how good you are; it's how good you want to be.

It means you lose by not trying to play full out, by not trying to do the impossible—whatever that is for you.

Quiere ser incluso más breve. Quiere ser una sola palabra. Si pudiera encontrar dicha palabra, si pudiera pronunciar dicha sílaba, el universo entero se desprendería de ella con un rugido. Esa es la indignante ambición del cuento, su fe más profunda, la grandeza de su pequeñez.

Was there then something wrong with him, that he couldn't just rest content? Must he always be dreaming up improvements? And it seemed to Martin that if only he could imagine something else, something great, something greater, something as great as the whole world, then he might rest awhile.

That thrust was now being expressed in new forms, based on steel-frame construction, which allowed newspaper offices and insurance buildings to rise above the towering spire of Trinity Church; and Martin imagined great structures hundreds of stories high, each a city in itself, rising across the land.

And according to a joke that was told many times in 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton were being driven through her hometown when Hillary spotted an old boyfriend pumping gas. If you hadn' married me, said Bill, you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant. If I hadn't married you, replied Hillary, he would be president.

The historical figures who earned the honorific "So-and-So the Great" were not great artists, scholars, doctors, or inventors, people who enhanced human happiness or wisdom. They were dictators who conquered large swaths of territory and the people in them. If Hitler's luck had held out a bit longer, he probably would have gone down in history as Adolf the Great.

Recall that intelligence is the pursuit of goals in the face of obstacles.

With this definition the case for rationality seems all too obvious: do you want things or don't you? If you do, rationality is what allows you to get them.

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible.

I'm competitive - that's what defines me - and I love it.

I love to see how far you're able to go, both in skills but also emotionally how far I can push myself.

I hate failure and I am in love with achievement.

I find ambition really attractive too - if someone's good at something they love doing. I want someone who is driven.

To right, the unrightable wrong, to love pure and chaste from a-far, to try when your arms are too weary, to reach the unreachable star.

Never give up searching for the job that you're passionate about.