Famous Quotes & Sayings

Abraham Lincoln

I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.

Abraham Lincoln

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.

Jorge Sampaio

should reflect with courage and ambition a growing demand regarding this issue by the international community.

Edward Norton

I started, with three friends, this website called Crowdrise that's sort of the Facebook for personal philanthropy, a place where anybody can have a permanent microsite of their own to stage creative fundraising projects for the charities and causes that they care about. And we did it with serious intent but without any ambition.

Edward Norton

What we set out to do with this movie [Leaves of Grass] was to create something that was funny and serious and had large tonal ambitions. A movie that could be poignant and funny, and suddenly quite violent. To have a character utterly sideswiped, and to learn that life is about balance.

Archie Panjabi

Luckily my parents were not against my ambition, they've always been very supportive. But they were adamant that I went to university first.

This proposal from the Bank does not suggest a strong ambition to re-direct financing away from existing fossil fuel patterns, or to deliver sustainable energy to the two billion people currently without.

This project is certainly very ambitious, but there must be a balance between your ambition and your resources.

Augusten Burroughs

This is how you survive the unsurvivable, this is how you lose that which you cannot bear to lose, this is how you reinvent yourself, overcome your abusers, fulfill your ambitions and meet the love of your life: by following what is true, no matter where it leads you.

Arthur Koestler

A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.

Art Spiegelman

One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality.

Dick Van Dyke

When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late 40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply be what is generally called a 'success.'

Elbert Hubbard

Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.

Elbert Hubbard

We will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Eileen Caddy

What is right for one soul may not be right for another. It may mean having to stand on your own and do something strange in the eyes of others. But do not be daunted, do whatever it is because you know within it is right for you.

Edward Abbey

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

Edward Abbey

My own ambition, my deepest and truest ambition, is to find within myself someday, somehow, the ability to do likewise, to do NOTHING - and find it enough.

Atom Egoyan

Don’t get depressed about not being where you want to be. This nagging feeling of anxiety is actually called ambition. Ambition is your friend.

Aristotle

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

Aristotle

Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.

Aristotle

It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others.

Ben Horowitz

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that's so important that it supersedes everyone's personal ambition.

Ben Jonson

Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need

Ben Jonson

Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature's self.

Alexis de Tocqueville

No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.

Alexis de Tocqueville

What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Among the droves of men with political ambitions in the United States, I found very few with that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in earlier times and that is invariably the preeminent trait of great characters wherever it exists.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The First thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation.

Alexandra Roach

My ambition is to become one of those actresses that is like a chameleon that you don't recognize.

Lyon's biggest rival is Lyon itself. We need to stay vigilant. Our ambition is to win the treble.

Ellen Key

Ambition has developed into a passion which drives women, as well as men, to great works - and small deeds. Formerly competitors in the race for men, they are now competing in the race for social tasks and distinctions.