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Ambition Quotes

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Ambition Quotes

“For a woman ... to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her ambitions, her emotional and intellectual capacities, her social duties, her tender virtues, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration to the social conditions that demean and constrain her. Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal femininity - a perversion, if you will.”

“Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.”

Men Firsts Humans Desire Effort Conditions Human Nature Ambition Spring Capacity Constitution Slavery Enterprise Snaps

Book:Slavery

Source: Slavery

“No pleasure or success in life quite meets the capacity of our hearts. We take in our good things with enthusiasm, and think ourselves happy and satisfied; but afterward, when the froth and foam have subsided, we discover that the goblet is not more than half-filled with the golden liquid that was poured into it.”

Thinking Heart Enough Pleasure Half Ambition Capacity Filled Good Things Satisfied Golden Enthusiasm Success In Life Liquid Foam

Book:Goose-quill Papers

Source: Goose-quill Papers

“We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we commercialize art, we cherish success and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. The kids know that if we really valued learning, we would pay our teachers what we pay our lawyers and stockbrokers. If we valued art, we would not measure it by its capacity to produce profits. If we regarded literature as important, we would remove it from the celebrity sweepstakes and spend a little money on our libraries.”

“Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy.”

May Form Saws Modern Effects Benefits Ambition Capitalism Capacity Direct Greed Unhappy Destructive Productive Adam Greedy Illusory Wisps

Author:Allen W. Wood

“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”

Source: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.”

People Want Ends Philosophy Wisdom Happiness Ambition Capacity Perfection Possession Proportion Virtuous Pursuit Of Happiness

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

“It is hope in this wider sense which enabled my father to build, from scratch, one of India's largest modern enterprises. His was an undertaking powered by hard work, initiative, self-belief but, above all else, the capacity, as he would often say, "to dream with your eyes wide open".”

Self Hard Dream Eye Father Belief Goal Modern Hard Work Ambition Commitment Capacity India Wide Enterprise Initiative Scratches Undertakings Belive Belief In Self Eyes Wide Open

Author:Anil Ambani

“Ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportioned to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy.”

Ability Ambition Weakness Capacity Weak Unhappy

Book:A Memorial of Daniel Webster: From the City of Boston

Source: A Memorial of Daniel Webster: From the City of Boston

“As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.”

May Art Made Self Inspiration Imagination Greater Advice Example Taught Ambition Capacity

Book:Edward Weston on photography

Source: Edward Weston on photography

“When I went back home, I was constantly being reminded, I'm an African woman, and so there are certain things I shouldn't do, certain ambitions that I should not entertain. That was a problem for me because I had never thought of myself as an African woman, never thought of myself as a woman to begin with. For me the limit was my capacity, my capability.”

Should Problem Home Certain Limits Ambition Capacity Capability Back Home African Women

Author:Wangari Maathai