My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. – Mary Shelley Frankenstein, Robert Walton in “Letter 1”. On his motivation for his voyage of discovery.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and be able to do more. – John Lubbock The Use of Life, 1894.
The ambition of this football club is very clear. You have to fight for trophies and be in Europe. The rest is not good enough. – Mikel Arteta Head coach of Premier League soccer club Arsenal.
I used to think ambition the great thing. It is not. Love is the great thing in the world. There is nothing but love. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 3.
My ambition is to go back to Spurs and Rangers in some capacity and give something back that they gave to me. – Graham Roberts
The experience awakened ‘my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day. – Georg Solti
I always thought it’d be fun to write something, but it never was an ambition of mine, per se. – Glenn Howerton
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As the country now turns a new leaf, our ambition is to give hope to each and every Afghan. – Hamid Karzai
It’s hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for Jimmy Carter was to tell him something was impossible, and he would usually do it. – Hamilton Jordan
I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high. – Haruki Murakami
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I’d place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs. – Horace Walpole
Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice. – Georges Bizet
I just think my own ambition would not allow me to sit on the gifts that my creator had given me. And so that’s when I realized that I could actually go away. – Janelle Monae
Peace is, indeed, our policy. A kind Providence has cast our lot on a portion of the globe sufficiently vast to satisfy the most grasping ambition, and abounding in resources beyond all others, which only require to be fully developed to make us the greatest and most prosperous people on earth. – John C. Calhoun
When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there. – Jim Henson
As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too. – Johnny Depp
As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield, I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn’t actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course, as we all know from fairy stories, when you achieve that ambition, you find out you don’t want it. – Jarvis Cocker
There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher. – Henry Van Dyke
I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go. – Joseph Conrad
I don’t want to be obnoxious with my ambition or sound like I expect any sort of entitlement here. Hollywood is not in the business of humoring people. – Jason Bateman
