Home / Topics / Ambition Quotes

Ambition Quotes

Browse 3325 quotes about Ambition.

Ambition Quotes

“In London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success.”

World Country Bigs America House Forget Economy Cutting Achieve Politician Ambition Pressure London Lovely Extras Bangs Tangible Measure Of Success Mrs Thatcher

Author:Peter York

“America breeds ambition and while that can be a good thing, sometimes it's not. Ambition also breeds competition and that can be a very bad thing. People become chronically preoccupied with competing and don't know when to stop. It can become unhealthy.”

People Knows Sometimes America Ambition Competition Good Things Bad Things Competing Unhealthy

Author:Chaka Khan

“What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.”

“For more than two generations, my family had never achieved their ambitions. Their talents were unappreciated and unused. They deserved better. They hadn't done anything wrong; they just had some bad breaks. Why was I succeeding? Why was I living my dreams? I wasn't more deserving than they were. I wasn't smarter or a better person. What was the difference between us that allowed me to attain so much in a short time? America. America was the difference. I had been born a citizen of the greatest nation in all of human history.”

Source: An American Son: A Memoir

“Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this.... Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm.... The remembrance then of what is past, if it operates rightly must inspire her with the most laudable of an ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great adversity.... Let then, the world see that she can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to the bravest virtue in time of war.”

Ifs World War Country America Past Causes Principles Virtue Honest Inspire Bears Fame Equal Ambition Fairs Adversity Prosperity Opening Firm Temper Remembrance Serene

Author:Thomas Paine

“The Miss America contest isthe most perfectly rendered theater in our culture, for it so perfectly captures what we yearn for: a low-class ritual, a polished restatement of vulgarity, that wants to open the door to high-class respectability by way of plain middle-class anxiety and ambition.”

Way Want America Culture Class Doors Middle Missing Anxiety Ambition Lows Theater Entertainment Middle Class Ritual Capture Contests Polished Vulgarity Respectability Miss America High Class

Author:Gerald Early

“If America gave anybody anything it is ambition. Bad things would come out of it because some guys are in a hurry, but that doesn't mean they're evil or anything, it just means they fall into bad grace somehow.”

Ifs Mean America Guy Fall Evil Grace Ambition Bad Things

Author:Jack Kirby

“One of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Sen. McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same. Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country.”

“We need an effective American diplomacy that will marshall the resources of nations in the Asian Pacific Rim to put pressure on North Korea, on Kim Jong-un, to abandon his nuclear ambitions. It has to remain the policy of the United States of America, the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, plain and simple.”

“America is capable at single moments of receiving the depth and the breadth of the homiletical vision of black America when a black preacher rises to his or her craft at the height of his or her ambition and the desire to tell America the truth.”

Moments America Desire Black Vision Ambition Capable Depth Crafts Height Receiving Preacher Single Mom Breadth Black America

Author:Michael Eric Dyson

“Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard.”

America Ambition Regard Doctrine Empires Regions Latin Latin America Backyards Be Considerate

Author:Jose Saramago

“We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them. (pg. 43, "The Unsettling of America")”

Has Beens Made America Turns Products Fit Ambition Consequence Made It

Author:Wendell Berry

“America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”

“I believe we can seize this future together, because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. [...] We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions. [...] We are and forever will be the United States of America. [...] We will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.”

World Believe States Earth Together America Individual I Believe Nations United United States Forever Greater Ambition Election Divided United States Of America Futures Together

Author:Barack Obama

“No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.”

Doe America Order Wealth Honor Ambition Bounds Noble Ancestor Exceed Medieval Stigma Love Of Money

Author:Alexis de Tocqueville

“People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.”

People Dream America Courses House White Fashion Ambition Green Foreigners Detached Unlucky Depraved Precedence Shutters

Author:Margaret Mead

“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.”

“America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.”

America United Ready Thousand Ambition Hundred Soldier Combat Troops Veteran Handful Exhibits Posture National Defense

Book:The Federalist, on the new constitution, written in 1788, with an appendix, containing the letters of Pacificus and Helvidius on the proclamation of neutrality of 1793, also the original articles of confederation and the constitution of the United States

Source: The Federalist, on the new constitution, written in 1788, with an appendix, containing the letters of Pacificus and Helvidius on the proclamation of neutrality of 1793, also the original articles of confederation and the constitution of the United States

“There is not a man in America who has not had a secret ambition to boot an infant.”

Men America Secret Ambition Boots Infant

Author:W. C. Fields

“The treasury of America lies in those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a special favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the originations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Every country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control.”

Men Country America Lying Energy Powerful Class Special Depends Ambition Invention Treasury

Book:Woodrow Wilson: the essential political writings

Source: Woodrow Wilson: the essential political writings

“I think we are destroying the minds of America and that has been one of my lifelong ambitions.”

Thinking Mind Has Beens America Ambition Destroying Lifelong

Author:John Kricfalusi