Quotes About Ambition

She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.

You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.

The kids I see are lazy. Nobody wants to work. I teach physics. It takes years to master. But all the kids want to dress like Charlie Sheen and make a million dollars before they're twenty-eight. The only way you can make that kind of money is in law, investment banking, Wall Street. Places where the game is paper profits, something for nothing. But that's what the kids want to do, these days.

And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn't let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating.

There is no greater pleasure than to win what everyone desires

that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest;

It's hard to decide who's truly brilliant; it's easier to see who's driven, which in the long run may be more important.

The exploitations he had found so profitable he now attacked with the money he had made from them. He

Ninguna persona inteligente sabe a qué quiere dedicarse hasta los veinte o treinta años.

A writer should always feel like he's in over his head

He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

Where did the boy genius go? He had been, as a child, expected to be a neurosurgeon, or a great novelist. And now he's considering (or, okay, refusing to consider) law school. Was the burden of his potential too much for him?

who refuses to distinguish between setback and catastrophe; who worships accomplishment above all else and makes himself unbearable to others because he genuinely believes he can root out and reform every incidence of human fecklessness and mediocrity.

She could, she thinks, have entered a different life. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

Mensen zijn dom. Op een trommel slaan om een beer aan het dansen te krijgen, terwijl we de sterren zouden willen ontroeren.

It seems good enough; parts seem very good indeed. She has lavish hopes, of course—she wants this to be her best book, the one that finally matches her expectations.

All my life I could do anything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted

I think pretty much everybody who says he needs money really and truly needs money.

Hayalperestler, ileri görüÅŸlüler nerede, peki? Hepsini uyuÅŸturuculara ve k?r?lan heveslere mi kurban verdik?

Do you want to much to live in London? he asks. I do, she says. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I were happy with the quiet life. As do I.

An intensely competitive young man who believed he was superior to others, Trump accepted that people would seek advantages wherever they could find them.

It's an old chestnut to say that we need to keep challenging ourselves throughout life. Samuel Beckett memorably declared, Try again. Fail again. Fail better, while T.S. Eliot proclaimed that Old men ought to be explorers. More bluntly, Cyril Connolly maintained that we should cast aside whatever piece of iridescent mediocrity we are wasting our time with and get down to creating a masterpiece.

Politics requires sacrifice. The sacrifice of others, of course.