Famous Quotes & Sayings

Friedrich Nietzsche

To explore the whole sphere of the modern soul, to have sat in every nook- my ambition, my torture, and my happiness

Freeman Dyson

We do not need to have an agreed set of goals before we do something ambitious!

Eric Cantona

Ferguson, as a manager, and Ken, as a director, are very similar. One's a great manager, the other a great director, but both have a lot of humanity and a lot of humility. They always give you the energy... with Ferguson when we played a game it was like it was his first game - he's so passionate and gives you ambition every time. And Ken works the same way - they're very similar.

George Eliot

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

Franz Liszt

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

Franz Liszt

My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future.

Christian Wiman

There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.

Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.

An ambition to excel in petty things obstructs the progress to nobler aims.

Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.

Ambitious princes value inherited kingdoms not so much as conquered provinces.

George W. Bush

Afghanistan is the most daring and ambition mission in the history of NATO.

George W. Bush

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.

George W. Bush

America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

Gene Tunney

My own ambition in the ring had always been skillful boxing, speed and defense - on the order of Mike Gibbons.

Garry Wills

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.

Frank Sinatra

I think my greatest ambition in life is to pass on to others what I know.

George Eliot

But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!

Fergus Henderson

Ambition drives you on, ability certainly helps, but the fickle finger of fate and luck are great things.

Fay Weldon

Ambition will, and should, always outstrip achievement.

Fanny Burney

A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

Francis Parkman

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.

Francesco Guicciardini

I know no man who feels deeper disgust than I do at the ambition, avarice, and profligacy of the priesthood, as well because every one of these vices is odious in itself, as because each of them separately and all of them together are utterly abhorrent in men making profession of a life dedicated to God.

Francesco Guicciardini

Ambition is not in itself an evil; nor is he to be condemned whose spirit prompts him to seek fame by worthy and honourable ways.

Erwin McManus

The fuel of ambition is not the problem; it is the focus of ambition that frees or betrays us.

Fisher Ames

A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices, and ambitions of their leaders is a democracy.

Fernando Torres

The Champions League is a big ambition, and all the footballers want to play in it, it is a very important competition.

Fiona Apple

I was never somebody who grew up going, 'I really want to be a singer in a band,' and I never had any ambition toward anything, really.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.

Helen Keller

Change may be the vitalizing wind blowing through the house of life, but it is not an abiding force. We need permanent things to soak peace into us as well as progress - the beauty of the earth, seedtime and harvest, the smiles of lovers, the joy of the young in being alive, pride in craftsmanship. Why, oh why must we let ourselves forget these lasting treasures in an age of consuming ambition, speed madness and accumulated goods that leave us no chance to live? If we cannot be contented with a little no wealth will ever satisfy us.

George Eliot

... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.

O. Henry

It's important that Arsenal has the same sporting ambition as me. Deep down I would love to win the Champions League.

Jean Fernandez

It's hard to talk about ambition when you look at the nature of this game.