Quotes About Ambition

Puede que te lleve años, pero al fin descubrirás que el mayor estorbo a la bendición de Dios en tu vida no son los demás, sino tú mismo: tu propia voluntad, tu orgullo obstinado y tu ambición personal.

Noble aspirations disperse fast under the pressures of reality . p208(hardcover)

And pushed the button.

We must not try to become large in order to become powerful. We must become powerful in order to become large.

ambitions are important to long-term reconfiguration is consistent with what other observers have concluded is essential for preventing companies from becoming complacent and content

What happened? A long track record of relatively stable success caused the ambition to hungrily search for new opportunities to atrophy.

Stretch and contradictory goals are important

you can't be a doctor. Only boys can be doctors. Leroy's got to be the doctor. You're full of shit, Spiegelglass, Leroy's dumber than I am. I got to be doctor because I'm the smart one and being a girl don't matter. You'll see. You think you can do what boys do but you're going to be a nurse, no two ways about it. It doesn't matter about brains, brains don't count. What counts is whether you're a boy or a girl. I hauled off and belted her one.

Course I didn't want to be a doctor. I was going to be president only I kept it secret.

Polluted, packed, putrid, it's the only place where I have any room, any hope. I got to go back and stick it out. At least in New York City I can be more than a breeder of the next generation.

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.

I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I?

She believed she could so she did.

Tortoise, Tortoise get bigger, bigger. Come on Tortoise grow up, puff up, shoot up! Spring up, Blow up swell up! Gorge! Guzzle! Stuff! Gulp! Put on fat, Tortoise, Put on fat! get on, Get on! Gobble food!!

Unless one was going to become a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer or some other kind of professional person, I saw little point in wasting three or four years at Oxford or Cambridge, and I still hold this view.

Well, maybe it started that way. As a dream, but doesn't everything? Those buildings. These lights. This whole city. Somebody had to dream about it first. And maybe that is what I did. I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it.

Then she was led away across the room to meet other people. I stood watching her. She was clearly conscious of her success and of the way these Londoners were deferring to her. "Here am I," she seemed to be saying, "and I only came over a few years ago, but already I am richer and more powerful than any of you." There was a little prance of triumph in her walk.

Goals and plans are fine, and they can often be effective motivators, but success promises something it can't deliver. As soon as you reach your goal, success creates a new one, which creates new anxieties and stresses.

Success is when you're seduced into thinking that your joy and satisfaction are not here but there--somewhere in the future, at some moment when you accomplish X or you win Y. Success can never get enough. It makes your head spin, because you get that thing you were desperately working for, for all those years, and when you get it, you realize that it isn't what you thought it was.

It's not about getting rid of desire. It's about giving ourselves to bigger and better and more powerful desires. What are you channeling your energies into? If they don't go into a few, select, disciplined pursuits that you are passionate about and are willing to give your life to, then they'll dissipate into all sorts of urges and cravings that won't even begin to bring joy that the one thing could.

Find me one person who's doing something interesting in the world who hasn't felt the hot sting of a NO.

To do anything new—to do the 1—requires tremendous mental fortitude to not think about 2 or 3 yet. That time will come. And it is not now. Now is the time for 1. You start with 1. And you work on that. Just 1. And when 1 is done, you move to 2.

What did you get, Mr Edwards?' 'Three As.' 'And what were you expecting?' Mr Edwards looks right into the camera and, completely deadpan, says, 'Three As.' For Edwards, the perfectionist, this still wasn't good enough. He wanted no, needed - to be the best and a simple grade wasn't enough to confirm this, even to himself.

From the earliest beginnings of Lyndon Johnson's political life—from his days at college when he had captured control of campus politics—his tactics had consistently revealed a pragmatism and a cynicism that had no discernible limits.