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Ambition Quotes

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Ambition Quotes

“People would do well to ask themselves how many of their ambitions and aspirations derive from the type of economic system they inhabit and the insecurity and exhaustion it creates, and question the sense and purpose of a society where control of a large portion of life is abdicated under contract in the labour market, and where immense creativity and potential is stifled by the need to do difficult and repetitive tasks in order to earn a wage.”

“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.”

“Although the needs of babies have changed very little over the millennia, over the past decades, female equality in education and occupational opportunities has altered maternal expectations. This renders baby-care requirements discordant with ambition for many mothers, and produces heartfelt dilemmas for others.”

“We want to be masters of our own destiny. We need no Gods or Emperors. We do not believe in the existence of any saviour. We want to be masters of the world and not instruments used by autocrats to carry out their wild ambitions. We want a modern lifestyle and democracy for the people. Freedom and happiness are our sole objectives in accomplishing modernisation.”

“Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty ("étant vide par essence", Fr.), he is trying to fill (or take up, - "remplir", Fr.) his life; the latter reason play a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches (or wealth), is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness, a need to let one's hair down (or to live it up), to put oneself on a false scent or trail. (de se donner le change", Fr.)”

“When you meet the one. It just clicks. Clicking is important in a relationship. When you click, you share the same passion and worldviews, ambitions and dreams. You are willing to share your inner thoughts, fears, desires and secrets. When you click, your partner makes you comfortable in your skin, he or she knows what you need even you're quiet, knows when to give advice and when to just listen. When you click, you allow your partner to steadily be what they desire to be, while you be a steady presence”

“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.”

“The creativity that comes from silence, from a quiet heart, feels different from that of ambition to both the creator and the observer. When the artist or the worker is out of the way, both the creator and the observer experience the art as simply a gift, an expression of the impersonal intelligence shared by all. The creator has no need to take credit for it, the observer no need to possess it.”

“I am not part of that earlier Australian generation who set off on a deliberate search for fame and fortune in distant lands. My generation was the first that didn't need to. By the 1980's when I left home, our culture had grown deep enough and wide enough to encompass all but the most rarefied of ambitions.”

“Who needs a dream? Who needs ambition? Who'd be the fool in my position? Once I had dreams, now they're obsessions. Hopes became needs, lovers possessions. Then they move in, oh so discretely. Slowly at first, smiling too sweetly. I opened doors, they walked right through them. Called me their friend, I hardly knew them... Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Times have been good, fast, entertaining. But what's the point if I'm concealing not only love, all other feeling.”

“Object to merit and distinction, and you're setting your face against quality, independence, originality, genius against all the richness and variety of life. When you hold back the successful, you penalize those who need help.”

“The International Criminal Court, like most international institutions, is a wonderful idea. A noble idea. All it needs to work is planetary government, worldwide democracy and the triumph of reason over tribal loyalties, political doctrines and individual ambition. In other words, it requires that we all live in the world described by the "Star Trek" television shows.”

“They have a policy in China for their big companies called "Go abroad." It's a rational thing for both the company and the country to say, "We want big, successful companies." Particularly in areas where they need it: agriculture, energy, technology. I think banking, too. One or two have bought a trading house. Some have already begun expanding around the world. Of course they're going to have those ambitions. Why wouldn't they? They're just doing it methodically. It's a logical strategy and, well-executed, they will succeed.”

“I do believe that India needs a lot more foreign direct investment than we've got, and we should have the ambition to move in the same league many other countries in our neighborhood are moving. We may not be able to reach where the Chinese are today, but there is no reason why we should not think big about the role of foreign direct investment, particularly in the areas relating to infrastructure, where our needs for investment are very large. We need new initiatives, management skills, and I do believe that direct foreign investment can play a very important role.”

“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.”

“I think that everybody who writes believes that their work has some kind of use-value, for someone, that there's some need for it, some person or group of people out there has demanded that these words come into being. I think that you do the work for these people. You hope that you can make a living at it. Whatever your ambitions and needs are in that regard, your only real requirement is to try and dig as deeply as you can dig to make sense of the meaning of human existence.”

“We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.”

“**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight -- a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision. [first-line bold by author] [2002] p.23”

“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”

“Our spirits have their own private way of understanding each other, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules. Souls have their own needs and their own ambitions, which the body ignores when it sees that it's impossible to satisfy them or achieve them.”

“India, she now knew, would not be content staying in the background, was nobody's wallpaper, insisted in interjecting itself into everyone's life, meddling with it, twisting it, molding it beyond recognition. India, she had found out, was a place of political intrigue and economic corruption, a place occupied by real people with their incessantly human needs, desires, ambitions, and aspirations, and not the exotic, spiritual, mysterious entity that was a creation of the Western imagination.”

“Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead.”

“I hope you find true meaning, contentment, and passion in your life. I hope you navigate the difficult times and come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open. And I hope that you - yes, you - have the ambition to lean in to your career and run the world. Because the world needs you to change it.”

“If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer's character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist's presence.”

“In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through.”

“If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.”