Ambition Quotes

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

Helen Keller

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.

John Webster

An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition.

Michael Korda

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Sir John Lubbock

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.

Robert Burton

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.

Henri-Frdric Amiel

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Timothy Leary

Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.

Francis Bacon

I rejoiced so greatly when I heard of your answer in the case of some who seemed to be filled with extravagant ambition for the office of legate, and to hope for it with impudence, even more than I can say. And not only I but all who love your name rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Moreover, when I read your letter written in the cause of the Church of Rodez, then was my mouth filled with laughter and my tongue with joy. Such things as these are worthy of your Apostleship, they honour the highest See, they are just what is becoming to the Bishop of the world. Whence, also, I bow my knees to the Author of your unique Primacy... In truth, you have been raised to this chair for the fall and rising again of many.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

Wendell Berry

Most students will be content with what our present considers relevant; others will have a spirit of enthusiasm that subsides as family and ambition provide them with other objects of interest; a small number will spend their lives in an effort to be autonomous. It is for these last, especially, that liberal education exists. They become the models for the use of the noblest human faculties and hence are benefactors to all of us, more for what they are than for what they do. Without their presence (and, one should add, without their being respectable), no societyno matter how rich or comfortable, no matter how technically adept or full of tender sentimentscan be called civilized.

Allan David Bloom

Its no secret that a Conscience can sometimes be a Pest, Its no Secret that Ambition bites the Nails of Success

Paul David Hewson