Quotes About Ambition

I have often been asked how I came to write. The best answer is that I needed the money. When I started I was 35 and had failed in every enterprise I had ever attempted.

We're headed the right way, but we cannot rest. We're a people whose energy and drive have fueled our rise to greatness. And we're a forward-looking nation--generous, yes, but ambitious, not for ourselves but for the world. Complacency is not in our character--not before, not now, not ever.

You work three jobs? ... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.

The goals and expectations that people have for me are pretty high, but ... if I were to have to compare their expectations to mine, I would say mine are ten times higher.

It's always the people who don't want things who get them.

Birdie is amazing and such an incredible child and I'm having such a great time being a mom but I still want to have a career and I still look forward to auditions and parts, and when I don't get them I'm disappointed.

If I was smart enough to be a doctor, I'd be a doctor. I ain't, so I'm a football player.

All movement, of every creature, comes from the desire after something better.

Mars is there, waiting to be reached.

I know the sky is not the limit, because there are footprints on the Moon -- and I made some of them!

The first time I applied to be an astronaut, NASA turned me down. I was not a test pilot, they said, and at that time, NASA wanted only test pilots. Other people, no matter how bright or talented, need not apply. Sure, I was disappointed, but I was determined and I knew the sky was not the limit, so I applied again.

Let me say, as I sit here before you today, having walked on the moon, that I am myself still awed by that miracle. That awe, in me and in each of us ... must be the engine of future achievement, not a slow-dimming light from a time once bright.

What comes after the moon? I think you can guess: Mars.

The future is about wings and wheels and new forms of space transportation, along with our deep-space ambition to set foot on another world in our solar system: Mars. I firmly believe we will establish permanence on that planet. And in reaching for that goal, we can cultivate commercial development of the moon, the asteroid belt, the Red Planet itself and beyond.

What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

Blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it. The pains of power are real; its pleasures imaginary.

When you look for a man- what you want to look for is a man with the heart of a poor boy and the mind of a conqueror.

Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.

You are never too old to dream a new dream or set another goal.

Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we cannot avoid it. Our applications are complex because we are ambitious to use our computers in ever more sophisticated ways. Programming is complex because of the large number of conflicting objectives for each of our programming projects. If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution.

What you guys don't understand about women is a lot. Smart women, they get bored easy. This one here, she's so much better than the rest, she has to manufacture her own challenge. If she didn't come from behind, she'd fall asleep on her own goddamn feet." Greeney

How did I happen to become an explorer? It did not just happen, for my career has been a steady progress toward a definite goal since I was fifteen years of age." Roald Amundsen