Quotes About Ambition

Our plan is one, one and again one alone—to reach the pole. For that goal, I have decided to throw everything else aside.

Sadly, the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. Conditions are never perfect. "Someday" ("someday I'll do this, someday I'll do that") is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN

The world is glutted with magnificent three-page starts, and the road to hell is paved with unfinished manuscripts.

Again and again in his career, Hamilton committed the same political error: he never knew when to stop, and the resulting excesses led him into irremediable indiscretions.

Noah Webster contended that Hamilton's "ambition, pride, and overbearing temper" had destined him "to be the evil genius of this country.

a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

factions can become "potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.

Reared with Methodist modesty, he could never admit nakedly to the true depth of his ambition. In this way, he was strictly Hannah Grant's son, not Jesse's. Ethical and honorable, he wanted to receive jobs based squarely on his merits, a faith he held so unalterably he called it "one of my superstitions.

He would smile at times, but I never heard him laugh aloud," said Louisa Boggs. "He was a sad man . . . he seemed almost in despair."124 Grant seemed to be staring into an abyss. "I don't think he saw a light ahead—not a particle. I don't think he had any ambition further than to educate and take care of his family.

I am so tired. It is so long. I want to see Hamilton.

He had a great general's ability to focus on his goals and brush aside obstacles as petty distractions. "You can abuse me, you can strike me," Rockefeller said, "so long as you let me have my own way.

Hamilton's life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up. He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth and breeding.

love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds, which would prompt a man to plan and undertake extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit." Ambition was reckless if inspired by purely selfish motives but laudable if guided by great principles.

Burr is said to have remarked, "Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.

Hamilton warned that "a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

Taking for granted the growth of his empire, he hired talented people as found, not as needed.

Already so flush that he had invested in his first railroad stock, with cash to spare for the firm, Rockefeller was far more receptive.

all looking up at the windows of J. P. Morgan & Co.

From the outset, Rockefeller had to wrestle with the demons of pride and greed.

Rockefeller tended to portray himself as a hard-driving executive who went as far as the law allowed but not an inch further.

When rebuffed by a bank officer for a loan, he shot back in anger, "Some day I'll be the richest man in the world.

He was the embodiment of power and purpose.

Only in such passages do we see that Hamilton, for all his phenomenal success in the Continental Army, still felt unlucky and unlovely, still cursed by his past.