Ambition Quotes - Page 35

• America breeds ambition and while that can be a good thing, sometimes it's not. Ambition also breeds competition and that can be a very bad thing. People become chronically preoccupied with competing and don't know when to stop. It can become unhealthy.

  Chaka Khan

  America, People, Competition

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.

  Jasper Johns

  Strong, Thinking, Government

  "New Again: Jasper Johns". Interview with Philip Smith, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 9, 2015.

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• What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

  Gloria Steinem

  Dream, Kindness, Thinking

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 28, 2010.

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• Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system.

  Thomas Paine

  Kings, Men, Enemy

  Thomas Paine (1856). “Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution”, p.76

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• Nature is my religion. And my desire...my ambition...the great goal I wish to achieve is to take my readers with me into the heart of this Nature. I love it, and I feel that they must love it......if I can only get the two acquainted.

  James Oliver Curwood

  Heart, Two, Goal

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• From early childhood I had always dreamed of becoming an explorer. Somehow I had acquired the impression that an explorer was someone who lived in the jungle with natives and lots of wild animals, and I couldn’t imagine anything better than that! Unlike other little boys, most of whom changed their minds about what they want to be several times as they grew older, I never wavered from this ambition.

  John Goddard

  Animal, Boys, Childhood

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• The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mean, Ambitious, Deceiving

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• I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves ... too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country - when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."

  Carl Schurz

  Wise, Country, Selfish

  Speech expanding upon his famous statement in the Senate many years before, at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Chicago, Illinois, October 17, 1899.

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• Ambition will take you And ride you too far and Conservatism bring you to boredom once more Sit down by the river And watch the stream flow Recall all the dreams That you once used to know The things you've forgotten That took you away To pastures not greener but meaner.

  Van Morrison

  Dream, Rivers, Boredom

  Song: I'm Tired Joey Boy

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• I can't wait for the iPhone 6. It's my only ambition in life to have it quickly.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Iphone, Waiting, I Can

  "Media People: Q&A With Karl Lagerfeld". Interview with Miles Socha, wwd.com. September 12, 2014.

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• I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million - a gamble for high stakes.

  Roman Polanski

  Warrior, Winning, Men

  Playboy magazine, February 1972.

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• Politics is the soil in which the nettle of poisonous enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, slander, morbid ambitions, and disrespect for the individual grows rapidly and luxuriantly. Name anything bad in man and it is precisely in the soil of political struggle that it grows with particular liveliness and abundance.

  Maxim Gorky

  Lying, Struggle, Men

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• Because your character is always full of ambition, the news of my being locked up must have been much harder on you than it was on me. When I was arrested, it was almost a relief to know that I could now experience what you were experiencing yourself. I am so afraid that they are breaking your spirit.

  Diet Eman

  Character, Relief, News

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• Mr. President, prime ministers, let us have ambitions: ambitions to move beyond the violence and occupation, to the day when two states, Palestine and Israel, can live together side by side in peace and security.

  Abdallah II

  Moving, Israel, Two

  Abdallah II's Speech at the Mideast summit in Aqaba, Jordan, edition.cnn.com. June 4, 2003.

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• Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.

  Frank Herbert

  Reality

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.97, Penguin

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• We are in the position of the man who has only two ambitions in life. One is to invent the universal solvent which will dissolve any solid substance, and the second is to invent the universal container which will hold any liquid. Whatever this inventor does, he will be frustrated.

  Norbert Wiener

  Men, Two, Frustrated

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.129, Da Capo Press

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• Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment.

  Stefan Zweig

  Accomplishment, Coincidence, Easy

  "Sternstunden der Menschheit". Book by Stefan Zweig, p. 280, as translated by Marion Sonnenfeld, 1935.

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• I was always a singer, it was nothing anyone planned on me doing for real, because it's an unusual thing. I was just sort of saying, even having modest ambitions to have a small career at singing, it's still really difficult to do that. Everyone wants to sing or act or whatever.

  Lana Del Rey

  Real, Unusual Things, Careers

  "Ice Breaker: Lana Del Rey". Interview with Sean Fennessey, www.gq.com. October 6, 2011.

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• What matters are those ordinary acts of kindness and of love, not vaulting ambition with its attendant hubris and smugness.

  Michael Dirda

  Kindness, What Matters, Ordinary

  "Kurt Vonnegut". Live discussion, www.washingtonpost.com. April 12, 2007.

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• I do have big ambitions, but I think we all do. I just want to keep working hard and being happy.

  Jennifer Lawrence

  Thinking, Want, Bigs

  "Best Actress Nominee Jennifer Lawrence Heats Up Winter’s Bone" by Brad Balfour, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 25, 2011.

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• If you have ambitions to go beyond your dreams, you should not seek to copy others' styles, but rather aim to acquire the fundamentals of the timeless principles of academic school, which is a prerequisite for the development of your Uniqueness as an Artist.

  Igor Babailov

  Dream, School, Artist

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• Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first.I say that information doesn't deserve to be free.Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not?...Information is alienated experience.

  Jaron Lanier

  Real, Thinking, Ideas

  Jaron Lanier (2010). “You Are Not a Gadget”, p.28, Vintage

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• Modern novels have become part of the do-it-yourself business, and they come in a very small number of standard kits. (...) In this wilderness cries the voice of Patrick White, Australian extraordinary, who has quite other, more austere and indeed prophetic ambitions. (...) (H)is failures are certainly the equivalent, and perhaps the measure, of other men's success.

  David Pryce-Jones

  Men, Small Numbers, Modern Novel

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• A gentleman of ambition is aware of the people he wishes to be associated with both socially and commercially. He knows that moving through different levels of society is akin to stepping through different rooms in an enormous house, each door leading to a grander environment than the last. He may, of course, settle for the comfort of any room he reaches. Alternatively, he may continue through successive doors to surround himself with even greater fineries and riches.

  Chris Murray

  Moving, Doors, People

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• A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Yeast, Dough

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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