Quotes About Ambition

We came from the bottom so we deserve to Balmain

There's this common perception that having a famous last name is all you need. A surname may get you a meeting, but if there's no talent you won't get the part.

All I want is to write fiction. I am a drain on the system, dragging around my debts and dreams.

At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

Looking at our faces you might have said we were all feverish and half mad, and perhaps you would have been right, but Helen's book made us feel we could rip the stars from the sky and write the world anew.

I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

I want too much. I always have.

Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

Don't you understand? There has to be a balance. A man can't be without power—it doesn't work like that. What was I going to do, write little books behind hers like a fucking echo? I needed something big. And this is big. Books on this thing will write themselves.

I don't have a Crested Butte.' 'You have something.' 'It's more like an abyss.' 'Something you need to get to.' 'Yeah. The rest of my life. IT feels like the way is blocked.

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific.

I always wanted to be something, but now I see I should have been more specific.

Sometimes i worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

All my life I always wanted to be someone. I see now I should have been more specific.

Even when you win the rat race , you're still a rat .

I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.

Waiting until you can afford to live in the style you'd like to become accustomed to is a curse against setting sail for distant horizons.

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator, and, if I could have your support, my chances would be reasonably good. But I know, and acknowledge, that you have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a candidate, yourself. If, however, you are not, then I should like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members down your way.

I have a congenital aversion to failure.

The struggle for today is not altogether for today -- it is for a vast future also.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Choose something big that you think it's really not okay to want, something you think would make you seem greedy or selfish if you asked for it. And make sure it's something you really do want. Then ask for it. Whether you get it or not, fight your impulse to apologize or feel bad. Tell yourself it's okay to want what you want. Combat the impulse to scale back out of fear that you're overreaching.