Home / Topics / Ambition Quotes

Ambition Quotes

Browse 3325 quotes about Ambition.

Ambition Quotes

“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.”

“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”

Source: The Best of Sherlock Holmes

“The source of each accordant strain Lies deeper than the Poet's brain. First from the people's heart must spring The passions which he learns to sing; They are the wind, the harp is he, To voice their fitful melody,-- The language of their varying fate, Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,-- The talisman which holds inwrought The touchstone of the listener's thought; That penetrates each vain disguise, And brings his secret to his eyes.”

Source: The Poems

“I want to see all the countries in the world and learn all the languages. I want to have thousands of friends and I want all my friends to be different. I want to play six instruments. I want to be the best in the world at two things. I want to be a great athlete and I want to be a great surgeon. I need to practice very hard every day. I need to sleep as little as possible. I need to read at least one major book every week. And I need to remember that my seventy years are going to go by too quickly.”

“Delicate, gracious, and eloquent, John Brandi's poems reveal that he remains an extraordinary profound poet of prayer and praise. His is the most honorable and heroic of ambitions - to dress our broken world in the clothes of language, trust, and hope.”

World Language Prayer Poet Broken Ambition Clothes Praise Dresses Remains Profound Extraordinary Heroic Delicate Honorable Gracious Eloquent Broken World

Author:David St. John

“words alike make the destiny of empires and of individuals. Ambition, love, hate, interest, vanity, have words for their engines, and need none more powerful. Language is a fifth element - the one by which all the others are swayed.”

Needs Hate Individual Language Interest Powerful Destiny Elements Ambition Vanity Empires Engines Fifth Love Hate Fifth Element

Book:Francesca Carrara

Source: Francesca Carrara

“One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.”

Writing Kind Seems Order Language Goal Ambition Entitled Power Of Language

Author:Cynthia Ozick

“Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I'd like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I'd like to know.”

Writing Dream Language One Day Ambition Italian My Ambition

Author:Benedict Cumberbatch

“But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?”

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”

Literature Language Struggle Ambition Acquire Adept Novices

Author:George Bernard Shaw

“Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in accord with more generous feelings, gives to the intellectual labourer reward and honour, in return for services which crown the nation with imperishable renown, and ultimately enrich the human race.”

Source: The Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the industry, the science, and the government of England

“The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.”

Want Language Term Common Effects Ambition Abuse Faults Simplicity American Language

Author:James F. Cooper

“I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: 'Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.'”

Ifs Said Lying Language Poor Race Written Conditions Color Ambition Lows Rose Satisfied Epitaph Eminence Downtrodden

Book:The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 1: April 1865-August 1868

Source: The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 1: April 1865-August 1868