Quotes About Ambition

It seems to have been meeting Methodist missionaries from India that inspired Margaret with her ambition, curious in someone little more than a child, to join the Indian Civil Service After listening to them, she remembered, 'I wanted to be an Indian civil servant, because I thought that India was a remarkable place and I would love to be a part, a cog in the wheel, of this great empire. (page 6)

An unavoidable side effect of ambition is to be gnawed by ambition anxiety about whether you're going to succeed. You're bound to feel it in your twenties and thirties. Put it away in your forties. By that time, you should have learned enough to recognize that fame and wealth are trivial—really, truly trivial—to a life well lived.

If I'm wrong, and you find yourself in an organization where sucking up is in fact a good way to get ahead, look for a new job. It's not a quality organization after all, no matter how glittering its public reputation may be. Life is too short to work there.

Here's the secret you should remember whenever you hear someone lamenting how tough it is to get ahead in the postindustrial global economy: Few people work nearly as hard as they could. The few who do have it made.

What never changes is your desire to change

The fact that I went from rags to bitches was just one of those quirks of fate written in the stars.

Nothing I like to do pays well.

Once Ryan asked Kurt, "What are you going to do when you're thirty?" "I'm not worried about what's going to happen when I'm thirty," Kurt replied in the same tone he would use to discuss a broken spark plug, "because I'm never going to make it to thirty. You know what life is like after thirty—I don't want that.

One of these days, I'm going to astral project myself up into the skies," he boasted. "I'll be going to the stars and the moon. I want to fly and see what's up there. "I want to go up to the sky," he said, looking at his aunt, "from star to star.

The fortunate man is he who, born poor, or nobody, works gradually up to wealth and consideration, and, having got them, dies before he finds they were not worth so much trouble.

To hit the moon, you often have to aim for the sun.

It's hard to convince people when you're just staring out the window that you're doing your hardest work of the day.

Everyone's got it in him, if he'll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities, There's no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.

The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. THerei s nothing else that so kills the ambitions ofa person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my appreciation and lavish in my praise

The man who does not work for the love of work, but only for money, is likely to neither make money nor find much fun in life.

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

I love America," he'd tell us. We were going to make a million dollars manufacturing objects we had seen in dreams that night.

Never go backward. Attempt, and do it with all your might. Determination is power.

It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn't get top where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

It's not just that people sacrifice their love relationships, and the care of their children, to pursue their careers. Something like this has perhaps always existed. The point is that today many people feel called to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel their lives would be somehow wasted or unfulfilled if they didn't do it.

Why did the entrepreneur cross the road? Because he could make more money on the other side.

But really, it's probably just easiest to keep doing what I'm doing. You know how it goes. At first it's just for the time being, until you can get your own story together, be the hero in something of your own. You tell people it's your day job, you tell yourself it's your day job, and then, at some point, without you noticing, it stops being your day job and just becomes your job.

The thing about building a castle in the air is it's easy. You build up. It's like a little ladder, then you start building a castle in the air. Then, you destroy the ladder. And your castle is floating.