Quotes About Ambition

But my hand was too small to do the gathering. [Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 79]

Many men have a passion for food or drink or sex or making money. For Lyndon [Johnson] it was politics. It was his natural element, what literally kept him alive.

Politicians who are not contemplating early retirement usually find survival more attractive than martyrdom.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.

Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!

I try all things; I achieve what I can.

I would be as free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books.

He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.

God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am on of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and I am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud.

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order.

I was in junior college a few years ago, so to be here sitting in this spot talking to these NFL executives, it's a dream come true. It's something that not a lot of people saw coming.

My first in, my first break, was I met a director and got to talking with her, and she happened to be casting this movie that she had written. That was ten years ago. That got me to Hollywood. I got paid $700 bucks.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

My agent said to me five years ago, 'Hugh, I can see one day you... if I had to plan a goal for you, it's for you to have the kind of career that Sinatra had.'

Years ago, I saw a job for head baker for The Dorchester Hotel in London, and I didn't want to move away from the North West. But then I thought, 'I've got to do this for my career,' because I was very ambitious. So I went for it and got the job.

You know, 10 years ago I never thought I'd be in this position. It's a dream and I don't even know if I dreamed this big.

I would never want to live in L.A., and I made that decision years ago, so I never chose that path for myself, although I have much respect for those that do it at a high level.

Twenty years ago I wanted to move to a nice place so our Charley would grow up a nice boy and learn a profession. But instead we live in a jungle, so he can only be a wild animal. D'you think I picked the East Side like Columbus picked America?

My father was and is a great journalist. Thirty years ago, I was studying broadcasting in college, and the problem was I wasn't nearly as good as my father. I wasn't as quick or as smart as my old man, and I realized it would be a long time before I was ever going to be, and I decided to do something else.