Quotes About Ambition

The value of achievement lies in the achieving.

If you only do what you can do, you can never be more than what you are now.

The ordinary objects of human endeavour – property, outward success, luxury – have always seemed to me contemptible.

If you want to live a happy life tie it to goal. Not to people or things.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Hay una fuerza motriz más poderosa que el vapor, la electricidad y la energía atómica: la voluntad (Albert Einstein)

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts. " – Albert Einstein

There is a driving force more powerful than steam, electricity and nuclear power: the will.

But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.

we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.

This might sound extreme, perhaps even a little deranged, but I don't think you can make it to the very top rank in any sport if you don't have a similar aversion to losing—a visceral, physical loathing. I look for this trait in an athlete, although the hatred of losing has to be balanced by a certain degree of realism, an ability to step back just enough so that you can process your disappointing performance and learn from it.

Alcott Louisa May 1832-1888

The more one gets the more one wants

Everybody wants power. Power in some form or other. [...] Some people want power to persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power in persecuting words, twisting them, molding them, torturing them to obey you.

sva ta težnja ljudi da budu više nego ljudski. Idiotska zato što nikada ne uspijeva. Nastojiš biti više nego ljudski, a uspijevaš postati samo manje nego ljudski... Hodamo po zemlji i nisu nam potrebna krila...

Reformers should aim at delivering men from the temptations of sloth no less than from the temptations of ambition, avarice and the lust for power and position. Conversely, no reform which leaves the masses of the people wallowing in the slothful irresponsibility of passive obedience to authority can be counted as genuine change for the better.

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory.

But the nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upo them, tend to acquire a taste for more. Lead us not into temptation, we pray--and with good reason; for when human beings are tempted too enticingly or too long, they generally yield.

At thirty-eight I was a poor, struggling, tired, overworked, unknown journalist. Now, at fifty... He paused modestly and made a little gesture, moving his fat hands outwards, away from one another, and expanding his fingers as though in demonstration. He was exhibiting himself. Denis thought of that advertisement of Nestle's milk—the two cats on the wall, under the moon, one black and thin, the other white, sleek, and fat. Before Inspiration and after.

Ah, if only one had work of one's own, proper work, decent work—not forced upon one by the griping of one's belly!

In the last analysis the great patriots were those who identified personal ambition with the welfare of their country. The traitor, as often as not, was one who, failing to recognize where the true interests of his country lay, identified his personal ambition with the less noble aspirations of his people.

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.

44. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

Bien hacen en despreciarnos, que aún no somos nada —decía Martínez de Ballesteros encogiéndose de hombros—. Pero ya nos llegará la hora.»

The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.