Quotes About Ambition

The minute I went into business, I was a success, and I've done well ever since.

I always wanted to be good at something, to be somebody. The minute I got into my first play, which was called 'Excuse My Dust' - I was 17 at the time - I knew that this was what I'd been looking for.

In fashion, the minute you say, 'I am successful,' is the minute you are going down.

I'm trying to cultivate a long-term career rather than get every job right this minute. That'd be putting too much pressure on myself. I'd go crazy if I thought like that.

I wanted to be grown up the minute I could.

The minute they gave me number one, I went to the studio. I was ready to give y'all something else. I was going 120 miles an hour.

We tend to think we can be happy only if we're number one. But if you want to be number one, you have to devote all your time and energy to your work.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....

Wenn wir nicht wüssten, wieviele Millionen von außerordentlichen Talenten an jedem Tage in aller Welt verkümmern müssen, weil sie von keinem aufgehoben und angepackt und entwickelt und schließlich zu den höchsten Höhen hinauf entwickelt werden!

Es gibt ja nur Gescheitertes. In dem wir wenigstens den Willen zum Scheitern haben, kommen wir vorwärts und wir müssen in jeder Sache und in allem und in jedem immer wieder wenigstens den Willen zum Scheitern haben, wenn wir noch schon sehr früh zugrunde gehen wollen, was tatsächlich nicht die Absicht sein kann, mit welcher wir da sind.

He wanted to be an artist, an artist of life wasn't enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it.

The Loser proceeds to narrate the same story he tells in virtually every one of his plays and novels: a story of frustrated ambition and (incestuous) love, suicide, and the generally grotesque absurdity of existence. But

Glenn had the good fortune of collapsing at his Steinway in the middle of the Goldberg Variations. [Wertheimer] claimed he'd been trying to collapse for years, without success.

But the city doesn't grab anyone under the arms: on the contrary, it constantly seeks to fend off the unfortunate people who repair to it in search of a career, to destroy them and annihilate them.

Sie brauchen in der Welt nach nichts streben , weil Sie werden eh hineingestoßen. Streben ist immer Blödsinn gewesen. Ein Streber ist ja was Grauenhaftes. Die Welt hat ja einen Sog. Der reißt Sie mit, da brauchen Sie nicht streben, Wenn sie streben, werden Sie eben ein Streber.

After all, there is nothing but failure. If at least we have the will to fail we make progress, and in everything, in each and everything, we must at least have the will to fail unless we wish to perish at a very early stage, which of course cannot be the intention behind our existence.

Ich erzähle dir das deshalb, damit du heute schon weißt, daß alles seinen Preis hat. Wenn du eines Tages endlich weißt, was du willst, dann wirst du auch konsequent sein müssen. Und du wirst eben nicht nur hart arbeiten müssen - das sowieso -, sondern du wirst auch deine Katzen ersäufen müssen. Und ich kenne keinen, der etwas gilt, der darum herumgekommen ist. Jeder von denen hat mal seine sechs Katzen ersäuft.

It is his raw ambition that draws her in, the impracticality of it all, this idea that he wants to do great things with words, that he wants to chase some kind of ancient fame, perhaps even become one of the people they read about in books.

He (Newt Gingrich as a freshman congressman) was both passionate about his goals and coldly analytical in his means.

the limits amplified the corrosive effects of ambition on the legislators, who focused from day one on how best to use their limited time as a springboard to their next post. That produced incentives to go for a big, short-term splash and leave the long-term mess to the next wave of their successors.

No wonder historians loathe Harding and Coolidge; these presidents' success goes to show how much better off the country might be if ambitious politicians with their grandiose plans would just shut up and leave us alone.

But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.

Some folks want their luck buttered.

The intentions as to reading, working, and learning, which he had so precisely formulated only a few minutes earlier, were suffering a curious collapse into a corner, he knew not how.