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Ambition Quotes

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Ambition Quotes

“Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.”

Seems Passion Pleasure Objects Ambition Gains Envy Luxury Covetousness Vexation

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.”

Men Art Said Ends Ambition Gains They Said

Book:The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin

“If you want to make it as a sportsperson - Become knowledgeable in the sport you want to participate in. Think about the sport and what it can offer in its entirety. You shouldn't want to become a professional sportsperson because of the money. There's a lot more to gain from being involved in sport. Work hard to get what you want. If it's your ambition, go for it. You don't have to be the best in the world to make it as an elite athlete. You need to be a grafter and be prepared to sacrifice.”

“The ultimate consequences of the individualist spirit in economic life are those which you yourselves, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, see and deplore: Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel.”

Source: On reconstructing the social order: (Quadragesimo anno)

“In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.”

Matter Ambition Gains Greed Riches

Book:Pensées of Joubert

Source: Pensées of Joubert

“There is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object.”

Matter Shows Objects Ambition Gains Desert Native Baseness

Book:Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside

Source: Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside

“The elevation of appearance over substance, of celebrity over character, of short term gains over lasting achievement displays a poverty of ambition. It distracts you from what's truly important.”

Important Character Term Poverty Achievement Ambition Gains Appearance Substance Lasting Display Short Term Elevation

Author:Barack Obama

“We spend a lot of time bickering at great cost, and very little time actually coming up with solutions. And I think we misuse our ambition for our own gains and rarely for the betterment of ourselves, and people around us and our environment. And I think that's sort of pathetic and desperate.”

People Thinking Littles Environment Cost Ambition Solutions Gains Desperate Pathetic Our Environment Little Time Misuse Betterment Bickering

Author:Dave Matthews

“Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him.”

Choices Loss Virtue Ambition Gains Soldier

Book:Plays of William Shakespeare

Source: Plays of William Shakespeare

“I have never had, nor will I ever have, any [political] ambitions. The only thing on which I have always set my heart is being able to gain God's good pleasure and, therefore, trying to make him known correctly and loved by humanity.”

Trying Heart Able Political Humanity Pleasure Known My Heart Ambition Gains Political Ambition

Author:Fethullah Gulen

“Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambitions of our brighter minds. The way for people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away.”

People Way Mind Rights Effects Higher Ambition Training Gains Injustice Reasonable Distinction Throwing Apologizing Brighter Castes Belittle

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here.”

Source: Trump: How to get rich ; and; Think like a billionaire

“It is simple to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and private gain. It is more comfortable to sit content in the easy approval of friends and of neighbours than to risk the friction and the controversy that comes with public affairs. It is easier to fall in step with the slogans of others than to march to the beat of the internal drummer - to make and stand on judgements of your own. And it far easier to accept and to stand on the past, than to fight for the answers of the future”

“I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”

World Dream Would Be Culture Loses Heard This World Ambition Gains Corners Noise Aspiration Retreat Renounce Complication Hopes And Dreams Corners Of The World

Author:Emile M. Cioran

“On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.”

Seems Interest Powerful Democracy Ambition Gains Election Generosity Accountability Despise Cynical Recalls Don't Trust Great Ones

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“It is well for civilization that human beings constantly strive to gain greater and greater rewards, for it is this urge, this ambition, this aspiration that moves men and women to bestir themselves to rise to higher and higher achievement. Individual success is to be won in most instances by studying and diagnosing the kind of rewards human hearts seek today and are likely to seek tomorrow.”