Quotes about ambition

And fired his soul with love of fame that was to be.

A greater history opens before my eyes,

A greater task awaits me.

I must essay a path whereby I, too, may rise from earth and fly victorious on the lips of men.

So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.

I thought that a man must be a fool to sacrifice such good fortune to ambitious plans, slow, difficult, and uncertain of fulfilment, which, even supposing them to be someday realised, in spite of all their brilliancy, were not worth a quarter of an hour of real pleasure and youthful freedom.

For James, there was no sense that expanding Tesco’s sales onto the web was what the human race urgently needed. It didn’t have to be. This was a ladder. And yet: he’d come first in the most prestigious course at the most famous university in the world, and he was sitting here in his boxers copying and pasting the item code for ironing boards. It didn’t feel as if he were ascending to greatness.

He'd looked at its ramshackle organisation, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn't a problem. There was always room at the top. (p. 53)

"Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes."

But this was the eighteenth century, when life was cheap and ambition unlimited.

Is that what it takes to go all the way in politics? Ambition first, everything else back in the pack?

And if it is, would any sane human want to have what it takes?

When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success.

Ambition is often—and often purposefully—misidentified with the desire for power, and damned with faint praise, and denigrated, and punished. And ambition is sometimes exactly that wish for undue influence on others. But there is a crucial difference between sometimes and always. Authority is not mere power, and it is extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, to confuse the two. When people exert power over others, they compel them, forcefully. They apply the threat of privation or punishment so their subordinates have little choice but to act in a manner contrary to their personal needs, desires, and values. When people wield authority, by contrast, they do so because of their competence—a competence that is spontaneously recognized and appreciated by others, and generally followed willingly, with a certain relief, and with the sense that justice is being served.