Quotes About Ambition

He never conquered polio, but he wrote a new narrative about his life that not only transformed him but won him the presidency.

If I wanted to be famous, I could have been famous before.

He knew that to achieve greatness you had to be an outsider. He knew that by struggling against adverse opinion, by sometimes feeling inadequate, you would become a stronger person, and that once you recognized your strengths you would develop a burning ambition to compensate for those feelings you had as a child, an ambition that would allow you to rise above them all.

Thanks to technology, we are probably as productive in two days as we previously were in five. But thanks to greed and some busy-bee syndrome of productivity, we are still asked to slave away for the profit of others ahead of our own nonremunerated ambitions. Whether

Success is as dangerous as failure,

Anybody is a damn fool if he actually seeks to be President," he told friends. "You give up four of the very best years of your life. Lord knows it's a sacrifice. Some people think there is a lot of power and glory attached to the job. On the contrary the very workings of a democratic system see to it that the job has very little power.

When he studied, it was not so much for a promotion as to EXCEL at his job.

He saw the pleasure you took from your job every day of his life, and THAT was what he wanted.

He wanted to be respectable rather than powerful; he did not want the controversy that went with power.

what had kept Lewis going all those years with so little outside support was the idea of improvement as an end in itself.

One of their best customers was an executive at Texaco, and one day Harry Ferkauf casually asked him about the possibility of a summer job for his son. "Harry, you know how I feel about you and Gene," the man replied, "but Texaco doesn't hire Jews." From that day Gene Ferkauf knew that if he was to be a success, he would have to do it on his own; the world's great companies were not interested in the likes of him.

Young man, Mr. Aubrey has made us so rich that we can now afford to worry about our image.

she had no fear of the spotlight, only of the places it did not reach.

One successful writer said he would never be a millionaire because he liked living like one too much.

Lincoln could not help making a painful comparison of their careers: "With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure;

I think my father would have liked to have been an artist, actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the drive or, I don't know, I mean he had a family to bring up I suppose.

I think I'm greedy, but I'm not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I'm greedy for an exciting life.

Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions.

Avarice, the spur of industry.

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.

Nada es tan cierto como que los hombres se guían en gran medida por el interés y que aun cuando se preocupan por algo que trasciende de ellos mismos no llegan muy lejos;

Those who, from a pretended respect to antiquity, appeal at every turn to an original plan for the constitution, only cover their turbulent spirit and their private ambition under the appearance of venerable forms.

Never settle for the lesser ambition. The job, the title, the conventional loyalties and rewards. Stay focused on the larger ambition, which is making a difference in the world.

Hitler dourly remarked to Wiedemann – as the adjutant recorded a few months later – 'I'm not here to ensure peace in Europe; I'm here to make Germany great again. If that can be done peacefully, well and good. If not, we'll have to do it differently.' He