Quotes About Ambition

Success is not dependent on unique attributes. But ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through ambition and hard work. -Theodore Roosevelt

Both Eleanor Roosevelt and Louis Howe recognized from the outset that Franklins spirit would be destroyed if his political ambitions were throttled. If he didn't have political hope; he would die spiritually, intellectually and in his personality.

Kennedy's death had unexpectedly brought fulfillment of his greatest ambition in circumstances that must have inspired awesome guilt and doubts.

What fired in Lincoln this furious and fertile time of self-improvement? The answer lay in his readiness to gaze in the mirror and soberly scrutinize himself. Taking stock, he found himself wanting. From the beginning, young Lincoln aspired to nothing less than to inscribe his name into the book of communal memory.

In the end, the unending strain with his father enhanced, rather than diminished, young Lincoln's ambition. Year after year, as he persevered in defiance of his father's wishes, managing his negative emotions and exercising his will to slowly master one subject after another, he developed an increasing belief in his own strengths and powers.

Get the books, and read and study them," he told a law student seeking advice two decades later. "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

The springboard to the development of Lincoln's ambition can be traced to his recognition, even as a young boy, that he was gifted with an exceptionally intelligent, clear, and inquisitive mind.

The story of Theodore Roosevelt," one biographer has suggested, "is the story of a small boy who read about great men and decided he wanted to be like them.

No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention," Lincoln was wont to say.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition

Privilege can stunt ambition, just as the lack of privilege can fire ambition.

He questioned if leadership success could be obtained by attaching oneself to a series of titled positions. If a person focused too much on a future that could not be controlled, he would become, Roosevelt acknowledged, too "careful, calculating, cautious in word and act.

He questioned if leadership success could be obtained by attaching oneself to a series of titled positions. If a person focused too much on a future that could not be controlled, he would become, Roosevelt acknowledged, too "careful, calculating, cautious in word and act." Thereafter, he would jettison long-term career calculations and focus simply on whatever job opportunity came his way, assuming it might be his last.

I'm giving my whole life to breaking the butterfly of a John Rockefeller upon the wheel of my ponderous articles

Not everyone was meant to be No. 1.

In less than half a dozen years, seemingly from nothing and from nowhere, he had risen to become a respected leader in the state legislature, a central figure in the fight for internal improvements, an instrumental force behind the planting of the new capital, and a practicing lawyer. Given his beginnings, he had traveled an immense distance; yet, given the inordinate nature of his ambition to render himself worthy of his fellow men, he had hardly begun.

Any man who has been successful, Roosevelt repeatedly said, has leapt at opportunities chance provides.

Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.

Roosevelt reasoned, "if the Vice-Presidency led to the Governor Generalship of the Philippines, then the question would be entirely altered." That post was the one he desired above all others, even a second gubernatorial term. From the moment the United States acquired the islands as a provision of the treaty in 1899 ending the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt had coveted the job of creating a new government in a Philippines free of Spanish tyranny.

Once Roosevelt had agreed to be drafted and assumed the responsibility of running for governor, he was in it for keeps. "When you're in politics you have to play the game," he told a friend.

Put ambition for the collective interest above self-interest.

An indifferent student at Groton, Harvard College, and Columbia Law, Franklin ostensibly was following an expected path for a member of the privileged class by joining an old, conservative Wall Street law firm.

Mack turned to the real reason for dropping by—to sound out Franklin on the possibility of running for an Assembly seat from the district that included Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, the village where Roosevelt had grown up and where his mother still lived.

Scholars who have studied the development of leaders have situated resilience, the ability to sustain ambition in the face of frustration, at the heart of potential leadership growth.