Quotes About Ambitious

All political power, all power as such, is stupid. Don't rush after it, don't be ambitious, because all ambition collects dust and only dust. If you are not disillusioned by dust, you will not be able to know what truth is. A man obsessed with ambition is not capable of knowing truth at all. Eyes full of ambition never see what is; they only see what they want to see. The ambitious mind is the wrong mind; the non-ambitious mind is the right mind.

I'm really ambitious about is being a really good comic and doing it for the rest of my life and getting really big. Not really famous because I want fame or attention, just a little freedom. So, that's where I'm ambitious.

People say it's not ambitious, but it is actually quite ambitious wanting to help people.

Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.

Human relations tend to be more difficult when you're dealing with someone who weighs 30 kilograms more than you do. That's when you worry about whether a well-meaning gesture could produce complications. We have no problems with countries like Madagascar or Bolivia, for example. But Germany is our neighbor and we have a shared past. Besides, Germany is powerful and ambitious and more than four times as large as we are. It makes complete sense that we would act cautiously. It's simply Realpolitik.

Anybody can be ambitious.

My mom was terrific. I described my mom once. If fear was a color, she was color blind. Nothing frightened her. If I told her that I was going to take over General Motors, she'd say, "You can do it." Just the most preposterous things, ambitious things, she said, "You can do it."

We have a pretty ambitious goal for the world. What we think will make the Web better. What we think will make all these businesses that integrate with us run more effectively. I think if we stay focused on doing that, that's really the main thing that we need to do.

I was an ambitious child and I tended to be scatterbrained. If I was at school and saw a bird outside the window I wanted to follow it. I was adventurous.

Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.

I think everybody wants to be loved, all the time, but it's not realistic. It's also not realistic, if you're going to be ambitious, in terms of changing the form or evolving.

To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

Young people, especially young men due to culture and perhaps testosterone, dream about changing the world, making an impact, doing big things. Now our young people are told life was better in the past, that we should be less ambitious and hold on to what we have. The grand narratives of exploration and change that drove the world forward for a century have been tamed.

Everybody I knew who was really ambitious and kind of annoying wanted to move to New York. I like it here but that has nothing to do with the fantasy image that goes along with it. You have so many people complaining, "It's not how it used to be." If you look for specific things and you don't find them anymore, that's disappointing. But that's just your disappointment, it has nothing to do with the city. I think it's a nice place-harsh at times, and so on, but beautiful nonetheless.

Did I have a heart to be contented? Well, no, not particularly. I had a tendency to be discontented: ambitious, dissatisfied, fretful, and tough to please...It's easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.

If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.

I had always known what I wanted, and that was beauty... in every form... a beautiful house, beautiful man, a beautiful life and image. I was ambitious to get the money which would attain all that for me.

It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.

Much-derided chick lit, chick flicks, and chick magazines have left ambitious women in a bind. Why is it that I, a young woman, can read GQ, enjoy Fight Club, and subscribe to Thrillist, while the idea of a guy doing the same with Glamour, 27 Dresses and Daily Candy is nearly unheard of?

I was very conceptual about what I was doing; I had the first five albums planned out, and all the songs on every album, and the artwork. I always had these ambitious musical projects in mind.

Statesmen are grocers, ambitious clowns.

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.

There are so many steps you have to go through to reach a high level, so youre kind of building your own, I would say, mountain. You have to go piece by piece by piece. When youre young and really ambitious, you want to jump right up. It kind of teaches you a lesson, I would say.

The girls everyone considers the "prettiest" are not always the most interesting or ambitious people.

David Foster Wallace: I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us, in a way, that are a lot more ambitious than that. And what we need, I think—and I’m not saying I’m the person to do it. But I think what we need is seriously engaged art, that can teach again that we’re smart. And that there’s stuff that TV and movies—although they’re great at certain things—cannot give us.

I was never ambitious to be a good actor. I just love doing it and I seem to be quite suited for it.

Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery.

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.

Everything depends on attitude. We are ambitious or lazy, enthusiastic or dull, loyal or undependable, according to our attitude. We get good grades or poor grades - according to our attitudes. Discouragement is an attitude. Lack of industry is an attitude. Failure to follow instructions is an attitude. attitude

I'm enthusiastic and ambitious, and I work hard.

I just think a hustler's ambition is that I never stop. I start off hustling and said I'll never stop hustling. An ambitious hustler is the one to hustle the hustlers. When I grew up, my heroes were hustlers. Now I'm their hero.

Ambitions for self may be quite modest. . . . Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. How can we ever be content that he should acquire just a little more honour in the world? No. Once we are clear that God is King, then we long to see him crowned with glory and honour, and accorded his true place, which is the supreme place. We become ambitious for the spread of his kingdom and righteousness everywhere.

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

Traditionally women have been more reticent to acknowledge their ambition and to say it with pride. So I like having people who work for us who are ambitious, engaged, respectful. Mis-hiring is a huge mistake. It's a tremendous opportunity cost throwing the position to the wrong person.

The smaller trips are useful in between the big trips: they help me gain new skills and experiences, they solve a perpetual case of cabin fever, and they are accommodating to an ambitious public speaking schedule and to some private guiding.

Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.

So much of today's film culture, in England and America, is based on lies, really. The industry is very ambitious, and success has become such an opium, people start from the wrong place they forget sometimes that the core of what we do is storytelling. It serves a need, a purpose for the individual and society to pull us together in shared experience and help us realize we're not alone in that experience.

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow, these doubts disappear.

I was pretty ambitious as a child to want to be a star with the talent I had, but I want to finish what I started and bring the fans along with me.

I incline to an aristocratic republic. This would satisfy the ambitious spirit among our people. We shall learn from the historic mistakes of others in the same way as we learn from our own; for we are a modern nation and wish to be the most modern in the world.

I'm ambitious and I'm determined and I know where I'm going to be. It's not where I want to be, but where I'm going to be.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

It's important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don't necessarily nurture soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal’s rhythm of rest and activity.

The biggest problem is typically overly ambitious expectations combined with undercapitalization.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.