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Ambition Quotes

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Ambition Quotes

“The disassociation between inner belief and outer behaviour allowed many people to enjoy a sense of retaining their inner decency while at the same time not risking any loss of livelihood, any compromise over career ambitions, let alone any potentially more sanctions; hence never revealing any signs of disagreement or openly showing anything less than apparently full commitment to the regime and its policies”

PeopleBeliefEnjoyLossCareersPolicyAmbitionCommitmentCompromiseRegimesBehaviourRevealingDecencyDisagreementSanctionsLivelihoodRetaining
Author:Mary Fulbrook
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“Every business is manmade. It is a result of individuals. It reflects the personalities and the business philosophy of the founders and those who have directed its affairs throughout its existence. If you want to have an understanding of any business, it is important to know the background of the people who started it and directed its past and the hopes and ambitions of those who are planning its future.”

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Author:Thomas Rowe Price, Jr.
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“To higher or lower ends, they [the majority of mankind] move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its very sources.”

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Book:The Works of Walter Pater
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“It's not greed and ambition that makes wars--it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity.”

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Book:The screenplays
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“... no young colored person in the United States today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration that members of his race have accomplished so little, he is discouraged from attempting anything himself. For there is scarcely a field of human endeavor which colored people have been allowed to enter in which there is not at least one worthy representative.”

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Book:A Colored Woman in a White World
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“Stevenson had noble ideas--as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered.”

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Author:Garry Wills
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“Ah, the truth, what a thing it is! I sacrifice so much for it, with people: I forego, for truth's sake, discretion, loyalty, diplomacy, tact, polite manners, elegance, grace, poise, balance, good taste, conformity, image-role, fashionableness, polish, confidences, promises, ambition, consistency, identity, clarity, comprehensibleness, good will, hypocrisy, and lots of other things--amass sacrifice, at truth's altar. God! is truth worth it? I hope it is. It better be, in fact.”

PeopleFactsTruthRolesGraceSacrificeIdentityBalancePromiseTasteAmbitionSakeLoyaltyClarityMannersHypocrisyConformityWorth ItConsistencyPoliteDiplomacyEleganceGood WillAltarsPolishDiscretionGood TasteTactPoise
Author:Marvin L. Cohen
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“If you're willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home, not go bankrupt because you got sick, 'cause you've got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times; that you can send your kids to college; that you can put some money away for retirement. That's all most people want. Folks don't have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that if they work hard, they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American dream.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”

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Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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“I was never appalled by myself. I felt a little bit uneasy about certain things. But honestly I've learned to love myself and to see that in the midst of all my ambition and desire to succeed and my search for approval, I do give things to people. I bring some sort of happiness to their lives. So I'm not so hard on myself anymore.”

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Author:Madonna Ciccone
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“My favorite thing about coaching? Teaching. Being around young people, just watching a player grow and develop. You know, a young man comes in with dreams and goals and ambitions and just helping him reach (them). It's like your dad watching you grow up and like me watching my boys grow.”

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Author:Tubby Smith
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“A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.”

PeopleGovernmentCausesCommonMoralPrinciplesInspireBecomingAmbitionConsciousDignityConstitutionBraveInspiredMannersGood ManSentimentsIntroducingSoberGood MannersElevationIndustriousFreemanGood HumorFrugalEmulationSociabilityGood MoralEnterprising
Book:The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I
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“There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will - a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion.”

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Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.”

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Book:Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer
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“Communications and commerce are global; investment is mobile; technology is almost magical; and ambition for a better life is now universal. We earn our livelihood in peaceful competition with people all across the earth. Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.”

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Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1993
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“The loss of seriousness seems to me to be, in effect, a loss of hope. I think that the thing that made people rise to real ambition, real gravity was the sense of posterity, for example - a word that I can remember hearing quite often when I was a child and I never hear anymore. People actually wanted to make the world good for people in generations that they would never see. It makes people think in very large terms to try to liberate women, for example, or to try to eliminate slavery.”

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Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society. Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual - this freedom is necessary for the individual.”

PeopleTryingLongArtTwoMatterReasonPurposeIndividualCreativeAmbitionConscienceSakeTyrannyUrgesHaving Hope
Author:Reinhold Niebuhr
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“I feel bad that people think that "feminism" is a dirty word. I don't understand that at all, I'm proud to be labeled a feminist. I consider myself a person who has throughout my entire life stood up for myself. It's never been my ambition to be someone who takes a backseat to anything. I'm not a male basher at all. I divide people into assholes and non-assholes, and that's genderless. I encounter sexism everyday.”

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Author:Janeane Garofalo
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“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.”

PeopleWantBelieveIdeasCountryCharacterAmericaI BelieveInterestChallengesClearSecurityPositionAmbitionPicksLet MeAcknowledgeDisagreeNational SecurityMccainNational Interests
Author:Barack Obama
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“The world we live in pictures a pie with only so many pieces, and if other people have more you have less, and you have to compete with other people in order to try to get ahead. You have to sell yourself at every available opportunity. The shift, the enlightened shift, has to do with a movement from competition to collaboration, from sales to service, from ambition to inspiration, and to a belief in scarcity to a belief in abundance as an eternal spiritual quality.”

PeopleIfsWorldTryingInspirationSpiritualOrderOpportunityBeliefQualityPiecesMovementAmbitionEternalSellsCompetitionAvailableAbundanceEnlightenedCollaborationPieScarcityGet Ahead
Author:Marianne Williamson
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“One thing that struck me about going to those tech conferences was all the enthusiasm for free culture, and remixing, and social media, but people's greatest ambition was to be sponsored by Chipotle or something equivalent to that. It was this weird mix of collaborative, utopian claims and this total acquiescence to commercial imperatives.”

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Author:Astra Taylor
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“I have a profound dislike for showing off one's material wealth. This is insensitive and it is not what human hearts are made for. But what I like about China and sometimes miss in Europe is the entrepreneurial spirit of our young people, their ambition and dynamism.”

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Author:Zhang Xin
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“I'm certainly not an expert and I imagine I'll spend my life figuring it out. What I do know, is that you can't take it all on yourself: find amazing people to collaborate with, build a team, and support other people doing the same. When you share your goals and ambitions with other people and they share with you, you exist in an energizing cycle of always creating new things with people that believe in you.”

PeopleKnowsBelieveGoalSupportImagineTeamShareAmbitionCreatingExpertsCyclesNew ThingsBelieve In YouAmazing PeopleEnergizingGoals And AmbitionsFiguring ItCreating New Things
Author:Karlie Kloss
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