Quotes About Ambition

I really do love 'Panama.' But I'd also have to admit that right now, if I were driven to write another novel like that, I wouldn't even try to find a publisher for it. It simply wouldn't be published. I'd be writing it to put in my closet upstairs.

But Donald heard on Radio Disney that they were giving a Nintendo 64 away to the ninetieth caller every day for a week. He listened all week and kept calling in until he gauged the perfect time, and one day he ran upstairs and said, 'I won it!' He's always been able to will what he wants.

It's like, 'Oh, great, drag queens can excel!' - but then the ceiling is so low. You're only allowed on the first floor; you're not allowed to go play with the big boys upstairs. Even RuPaul, who's a massive success, has been limited to where her music career can take her.

I never thought I'd run for president. My parents were immigrants to this country - and leader of the free world was not on the list of careers presented to me as a skinny Asian kid growing up in upstate New York.

I grew up in a family in which no male upstream from me had ever finished high school, much less gone to college. But I was taught that even though there was nothing I could do about what was behind me, I could change everything about what was in front of me. My working poor parents told me that I could do better.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.

Whatever you do, don't discourage your dreaming propensity. Your heart's desires are not empty vaporings. They foreshadow possible realities. Man was made to aspire, to look upward.

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.

I wanted to find something I was passionate about, something with the possibility of upward movement, and I wanted freedom. I need to be outside living life, not stuck in an office. I figured I could either be out selling condos in Miami, or I could move to L.A. and chase after that elusive actor's job.

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in Brooklyn. It's what gave me my drive to succeed, the upward mobility I've been after my whole life.

In Hollywood you just fail upwards.

When you have been lucky enough to move up the ladder, all you see, really, is the slide back down. You don't see the further steps upwards.

Man, I really think I was just fascinated with money... and I always wanted it growing up. I always wanted money... Once I got upwards in age, the older I got, the more fascinated I got with money.

I'm lucky: I always wanted to be an actor. But I never felt the need to be in with the crowd. I didn't mind being on the outside. I was always looking forward or upwards, not in.

It was an impossible ask to go out to Russia and knock out Kovalev. I felt that was the only way I'd win, but I made a good account of myself and we keep moving onwards and upwards.

The Paddy Stone dancers were all upwards of 5ft 6in and stunningly beautiful. I was stocky, tough-looking and 5ft 3in. So I became determined to create my own troupe.

I tell people to look at me and understand that everybody first told me that I couldn't be a 6-foot, 9-inch point guard, and I proved them wrong. Then they told me I couldn't be a businessman and make money in urban America, and I proved them wrong. And they thought I couldn't win all these championships, and I proved them wrong there as well.

My dreams as a kid were so far below the Grammys, like, maybe selling out a show, or, like, seeing your album on a shelf in an Urban Outfitters... and the Grammys are so far above that. It's very ridiculous.

I have my own production company called Urban Dreams.

I love 50 Cent. I know it sounds weird 'cause a lot of kids might not say that right now, but I definitely want to work with 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Coldplay: I want to work with different artists that are going to push my music to a new level. Not just in urban music.

I would love to play an urban working girl.

I can definitely write a book. Growing up, I really learned that. The stuff I was reading were urban books and I definitely got into it a lot.

I used to do a lot of plays in English, Hindi, and Urdu. I wanted to be an actor since I was three and a half.