Quotes About Ambition

In the Boston of my childhood, willpower was all-important. If you wanted something badly enough, you could have it. This maxim included curing yourself of paralysis.

I dreamed big," she recalled. "Why not?

coercive redistribution of wealth through government's abuse of law and misapplication of rights destroys individual liberty; ambition, productivity, and wealth; and the purpose of the commonwealth.

Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My band's twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams, but I never did. They did the 'mature' thing: after writing off the band as a teenage fantasy, they got real jobs and made some money. They called it growing up. I called it giving up.

There's a famous quote which goes something like, 'You are what you are, having secretly become what you wanted to be'. Maybe there's some truth to that. We like to think that society shapes us, but I don't think that that's the way it happens. Select, 1991

And yet, far off, I can hear something whispering that this compulsion to do, to intrude ourselves, to improve on what is--even when wholly well intentioned, particularly when wholly well intentioned--is the source of all our troubles.

Swimming isn't everything, winning is.

How many times should you try before you give up? If you want something bad enough, you will keep trying until. Until what? Until you succeed.

The distance doesn't matter. Just think about your next step.

all it took to have a good life was a cheerful, grateful mood, a clearly envisioned, heartfelt dream, and the willingness to chase it with an unwavering belief in its

Tullio and his date leave, thinking once again how much he wanted

Putting your boot on another man's head and stealing him blind, until someone with a bigger boot comes along to kick you out of the way?

Mark T. Sullivan

For what? Putting your boot on another man's head and stealing him blind, until someone with a bigger boot comes along to kick you out of the way?

Hurry to it, she thought, and quickened her stride. That's what Papa always says. If you want things, hurry to it. If you want things done, hurry to it.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

Man will do many things to get himself loved he will do all things to get himself envied.

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, what counts is the size of the fight in the dog.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who don't think enough of themselves to make something of themselves-people who did only what they had to and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better.

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'