Ambition

Quotes

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The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won't succeed, you must have a larger ambition.

Random Reminiscenses of Men and Events (1909)
Don't waste your effort on a thing which ends in a petty triumph unless you are satisfied with a life of petty issues.

Random Reminiscenses of Men and Events (1909)
If you have an olive, you want an olive tree. You want a little more. You want the whole tree.

New York Times (1996)
People want to be head of General Motors, General Electric... they want those jobs certainly for the income that is returned. But the income is itself a measure of the prestige and power, authority, that goes with achieving those positions.

Interview, 1986
I decided to be the best and the smartest.

Oprah Winfrey Speaks (Janet Lowe, 1998)
I was like a hit album waiting to be released. I knew my day would come.

Oprah Winfrey Speaks (Janet Lowe, 1998)
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want the chance to change the world?

Said to John Sculley, then president of PepsiCo, when inviting him to join Apple. Fortune (September 14, 1987)
I want the following word: splendor, splendor is fruit in all its succulence, fruit without sadness. I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself.

The Stream Of Life
Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Status Anxiety
Ambition becomes displeasing when it is once satiated; there is a reaction; and as our spirit, till our last sigh, is always aiming toward some object, it falls back on itself, having nothing else on which to rest; and having reached the summit, it longs to descend
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