Quotes About Ambition

If he had wished, he could have annexed Denmark; and ended a thousand years of war and history. But Charles had no weaknesses; now and thereafter he was behaving out of a book. The first maxim of Alexanderism is never to stop; Charles continued.

He fought with Augustus and Peter, not with Russia or Poland. He aimed at full apologies, not conquests.

To a Bonaparte it represents what Jacob Astor meant when he said, "The first hundred thousand dollars are the most difficult." It is the beginning, the possibility of a fortune, not a fortune itself. With it, Bonaparte, the greedy little soldier, could go to Paris and begin the story.

Napoleon taught the world, or perhaps only satisfied a latent longing and gave it shape and hope, to want to be rewarded, visibly, definitely, let us say inorganically, for its deeds. Curiously enough, this mode of thought is even commoner among women than men ; the postulation of an infallible judge somewhere, somehow, who will examine work done and measure it exactly and register it in a stepped list of rewards.

Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. - Ted Williams

In dreams begin responsibility.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

In dreams begins responsibility.

Come let us mock at the greatThat had such burdens on the mindAnd toiled so hard and lateTo leave some monument behind,Nor thought of the leveling wind.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet ; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

A great future doesn't require a great past.

It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.

Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.

If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one...

The life of ease is a difficult pursuit.

Man aspires to greatness, but all too often his hopes are submerged by the primitive instinct to survive at any cost.

When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.

Mongols were uneducated tribesmen who believed in enjoying life's simpler pleasures. Ghengis Khan expressed their philosophy most succinctly. 'Happiness,' he is recorded to have said, 'lies in conquering one's enemies, driving them in front of oneself, in taking their property, in savouring their despair, in outraging their wives and daughters.

the Afghans, were to a man executed on Durrani's orders. The Peshwa Ballaji Rao died broken-hearted soon after: 'his mind had become confused and he began to revile and curse his people'.95 But a decade later, Durrani was dead and the Marathas had begun to recover their strength. They were now back in control of much of central and western India, and ambitious to extend their influence from the Kaveri to the Indus.

As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas , or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs , as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety.

I shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo' if it wasn't fo' the inconvenience.

I haven't done anything--yet.

Avarice is patriotic!