Quotes about Ambition

But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (James 3:14 — 16)

I want the flowers but not the work. Isn't that the way it is with many things in life—we want the results but have no desire to put in the work required?

If you had permission to do what you really want to do, what would you do?

You clean and organize; you demand perfection—did you ever wonder why?

The ability to hope and dream.

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life, I find. [Quoted by Theodore Sorensen in 'Kennedy']

Just because we cannot see clearly te end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey.

We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.

I mean, they are just as susceptible to pressure and in many ways more susceptible to pressure because they are desperately anxious, this is their tremendous chance to break through the rather narrow lives they may lead.

It's far better to attempt something great and fail than to plan to do nothing and succeed.

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact'ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain … When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.