Quotes About Ambition

Power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it.

The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I'll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I'm just plain not talented or skilled enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.

People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world.

talent. Potential. Great potential

My job isn't to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world. In the whole history of the world. We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself dictator, and died for it. My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he'll need to help him. Nowhere in that does it say I have to make friends with children.

Why is it that the people who should be in authority are usually the people who don't want it, while the people who hold authority are usually the two-faced schemers who've stepped on people's backs to get it?

Porque los que llegan a la cima en un imperio son los intrigantes, los asesinos o los señores de la guerra.

Those two people in the back of the boat, he felt kind of sorry for them. They still lived in the drowned city, they belonged down there, and the fact that they couldn't go there broke their hearts. But not Deaver. His city wasn't even built yet. His city was tomorrow.

There is only try and try again, until you can persuade the world to work according to your new plan for it. ... Everything has a mind of its own and follows the laws it already understands.

You consider everything impossible unless you want it, and then it already belongs to you, in which case anyone who stands in your way is a thief.

We suddenly find ourselves afflicted with peace, you see. Always a disaster for those whose careers have not reached their natural apex.

And because it was possible, there was a part of him that wanted to play it out, see where this path led. I

Your motivation has to be rock solid. You have to want it so bad that even th threat of death won't take it from you.

You killed more people than anybody in history.' 'Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

said Ender cheerfully.

Ambition leads you to great risk. But ambition never leads you to certain destruction." "Unless you're a fool.

you'll dream, too.>

People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world." "What the hell, maybe they can.

Yes, I'm paranoid and xenophobic. That's how I got this job. Cultivate those virtues and you too, might rise to my lofty station.

Perhaps those who grew up among these people might somehow sublimate their ambition, or perhaps there was something in the racial genotype that suppressed it or replaced it

This wasn't about killing Bean—that was just a bonus. It was about getting Bean's babies.

That's why I don't want him to take our babies away from me. I must have them all, the way conquerors have had to have this city. I must have them. That is my empire.

You only covet what you do not have.' Who said that?" "You did," said Han Fei-tzu. "Some say, 'what you cannot have.' Others say, 'what you should not have.' I say, 'You can truly covet only what you will always hunger for.

Knocking him down was the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. - Ender