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• Ambition: A strong desire to do or achieve something.  Oxford Dictionary
• Ambition: Desire and determination to achieve success.  Oxford Dictionary
• Ambition: A desire to be successful, powerful or famous.  Merriam Webster
• Desire, Achievement,  Success,  Passion,  Lust,  Power,  Cravings,  Hope,  Motivation

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• Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue. Quintilian
• Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues. Quintilian
• Ambition is not a vice of little people. Michel de Montaigne
• Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them. Napoleon Bonaparte
• Ambition can creep as well as soar. Edmund Burke
• There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as ambition; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its colour from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater. Fulke Greville

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There are those who speak in favour of ambition

• A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. Marcus Aurelius
• It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion. Robert Southey
• Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme; to be sublimely great or to be nothing. Robert Southey
• Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them- – that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting. L.M. Montgomery
• Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat. Steven Erikson
• If a man does not work passionately – even furiously – at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God. George Lois
• A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it. Henry Ward Beecher
• If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles. Carl von Clausewitz
• Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds. Thomas Dunn English
• A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm–it can creep, but it cannot fly. Henry Ward Beecher
• It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion; or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play? William Shenstone

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Ambition is the fuel that inspires great achievements

• Without ambition, one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Dreams, goals, ambitions – these are the stuff man uses for fuel. Ron Hubbard
• Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine. Ain’t nowhere else in the world where you can go from driving a truck to cadillac overnight. Elvis Presley
• Big results require big ambitions. James Champy
• I do not fear failure. I only fear the “slowing up” of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, “Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?” General George S. Patton
• Success,  Achievement

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Others argue against ambition

• Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude. Sallust
• Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. Walter Savage Landor
• Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions. David Hume
• Ambition is the last infirmity of noble minds. James Matthew Barrie
• Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens. Lao Tzu
• A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. Henry Ward Beecher
• An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition. Michael Korda
• We often pass from love to ambition, but we hardly ever return from ambition to love. François de la Rochefoucauld
• It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it. Seneca
• Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable. Eleanor Roosevelt
• Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition. Alain de Botton
• Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking. Edward Dahlberg
• It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world. Leonardo da Vinci
• We grow small trying to be great. Eli Stanley Jones
• Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. Henry Ward Beecher

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Ambition is a form of slavery

• Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top. Robert Burton
• Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need. Ben Jonson
• Slavery

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Ambition can bring out the worst in people

• It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will. Sallust
• All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority, otherwise called ambition. Cesare Pavese
• Virtue is choked with foul ambition. William Shakespeare
• Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping. Arthur Christopher Benson

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Ambition can consume a life

• Say what we will, you may be sure that ambition is an error; its wear and tear of heart are never recompensed, — it steals away the freshness of life, –it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments, –it shuts our souls to our own youth, –and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years.  Edward Bulwer Lytton
• Ambition is, “Living for …”, not ” … for living.” Mohammed Ali Bapir
• Devotion to duty is a fire that warms us but worldly ambition is a fire that consumes us.

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Ambition is a discontent with present surroundings and achievements

• Ambition is an uncomfortable companion many times. He creates a discontent with present surroundings and achievements; he is never satisfied but always pressing forward to better things in the future. Restless, energetic, purposeful, it is ambition that makes of the creature a real man. Lyndon B. Johnson

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Ambition is a lust that is never quenched

• Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment. Thomas Otway
• Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Ambition is the ecclesiastical lust. Daniel Noonan
• A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favor cannot satisfy him. Samuel Johnson
• Ambition never comes to an end. Kenneth Kaunda
• Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end. Charles Caleb Colton
• Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires. Benjamin Franklin
• Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. L.M. Montgomery
• Lust

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If taken to extreme, ambition can be a form of madness

• Ambition, madam, is a great man’s madness. John Webster
• Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen. Emil Cioran
• Insanity

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Life is cruel when ambition is combined with lack of energy or talent

• The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men is to endow them with feeble resources and yet to make them ambitious. Luc De Clapiers, Marquis De Vauvenargues
• Few are more unhappy than those who have great ambition, but little energy to urge it into activity. Norman Macdonald
• Talent,  Energy management

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Pursue your ambition in a soul enriching way   

• And not only do we have to put our feelings at the heart of our ambitions, we have to pursue our desires in a way that is life- affirming, rather than soul-depleting. Rigid goal-chasing is burning us out. Soul- anchored intentions are the way to get home.  Danielle LaPorte

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Keep following the long road to where your ambition takes you

• But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions

• Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. Mark Twain

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To reach your ambition, master yourself, not just your work

• Many people have the ambition to succeed; they may even have special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job, there is no need to master themselves. John Stevenson
• Mastery,  Self-control

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Make choices in line with your ambition

• You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise…guided by your own virtue and highest ambition. Philippa Gregory

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Allow trial and suffering to inspire your ambition

• Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and achieved. Helen Keller
• Suffering

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Don’t sacrifice your conscience to your ambition

• He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes. Chinese Proverbs
• An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty. Henry Ward Beecher
• I would rather be a little nobody, than to be an evil somebody. Abraham Lincoln
• Conscience

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Don’t let big ambitions overshadow small successes

• Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Don’t let your ambition come at the expense of causing suffering to others

• All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward upon the miseries and credulities of mankind. Joseph Conrad

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Combine ambition with goals

• An average person with average talent, ambition and education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals. Brian Tracy
• Goal setting

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Combine ambition with intelligence

• Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. Salvador Dalí
• Intelligence

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Combine ambition with purpose

• Ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose. Frank Tyger
• Purpose

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Combine ambition with love and devotion to others

• Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things. Albert Einstein
• Love,  Devotion

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Combine ambition with curiosity

• I think I benefited from being equal parts ambitious and curious. And of the two, curiosity has served me best. Michael J. Fox
• Curiosity

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Combine ambition with persistence

• Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. Bill Bradley
• To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forego even ambition when the end is gained – who can say this is not greatness? William Makepeace Thackeray
• Perseverance

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Combine ambition with love

• A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Pearl Bailey
• We often pass from love to ambition, but we hardly ever return from ambition to love. François de la Rochefoucauld
• The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise. Maya Angelou
• Love

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Combine ambition with a love of excellence

• The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time. William Hazlitt
• Excellence

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Make wisdom and truth your ambition

• Wisdom alone is true ambition’s aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed. Alfred North Whitehead
• The truth is an ambition which is beyond us. Peter Ustinov
• There are two goddesses in your heard. The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, giver her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you. Joe Vigil
• Wisdom,  Truth

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Make it your ambition to develop your talents and powers

• Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes. Jonathan Swift
• The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves. Herbert N. Casson
• Talent,  Power

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Make it your ambition to rule yourself

• 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 to do more. Oscar Wilde
• Self-control,  Self-discipline

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Make it your ambition to be who you are and pursue that line

• When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it – don’t back down and don’t give up – then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks. Bob Dylan
• Be who you are

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Make it your ambition to be all you can be

• Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be. William Clark
• Potential

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Make it your ambition to be better than yourself

• Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.  William Faulkner
• To be ambitious of true honour, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue. Sir Philip Sidney

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Make it your ambition to be great

• Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. Kenny Rogers
• I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless. Neal Shusterman
• To forego even ambition when the end is gained – who can say this is not greatness? William Makepeace Thackeray
• Greatness

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Make it your ambition to aim high

• Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. Les Brown
• No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. William Blake
• Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime. James Russell Lowell
• The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become. Harold Taylor
• If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest. Publilius Syrus
• There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves. Arthur P. Stanley
• I too must attempt a way by which I can raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men. Virgil
• Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky. American Proverb
• Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to “jump at de sun.” We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. Zora Neale Hurston
• They that soar too high, often fall hard. William Penn
• Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? Robert Browning
• If it’s IN you to climb you must — there are those who MUST lift their eyes to the hills — they can’t breathe properly in the valleys. L.M. Montgomery
• Think big, start small

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Make your ambition into a clear, specific image

• Very few people are ambitious in the sense of having a specific image of what they want to achieve. Most people’s sights are only toward the next run, the next increment of money. Judith M. Bardwick

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Make your ambition broad enough to include the needs of the community

• We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community… Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own. Cesar Chavez

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Ambition always looks ahead

• Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. S. Lewis
• Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. Sir William Osler
• It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it. Seneca

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Engage with your ambition in the present

• To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come. Eric Jantsch
• If you have a great ambition, take as big a step as possible in the direction of fulfilling it. The step may only be a tiny one, but trust that it may be the largest one possible for now. Mildred Mcafee
• Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. William Osler
• Live in the present

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Don’t let ambition take all your attention off what’s at hand

• Don’t let ambition get so far ahead that it loses sight of the job at hand. William Feather

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• It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books – what other men do not say in whole books. Friedrich Nietzsche
• I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom. Sir Angus Grossart
• To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. Samuel Johnson
• 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
• My ambition is not to be just a good fighter. I want to be great, something special. Sugar Ray Leonard
• I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God. Madonna
• Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all. Bob Marley
• I think my greatest ambition in life is to pass on to others what I know. Frank Sinatra
• Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig. Albert Einstein
• I have two ambitions in life: one is to drink every pub dry, the other is to sleep with every woman on earth. Oliver Reed
• My ambition is to be happy. Penelope Cruz
• I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal, I had an ambition to build. Eden Phillpotts
• 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
• I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. George Bernard Shaw
• To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. Samuel Johnson

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Ambition is a transient illusion

• The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. William Shakespeare
• Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name! Walter Savage Landor
• You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Anthony de Mello
• Illusion

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To be happy, let go of your attachment to your ambition

• You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Anthony de Mello
• Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals. Buddha
• When ambition ends, happiness begins. Thomas Merton
• Basically, you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be. Bob Dylan
• A young man’s ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himself-half your life goes that way, till you’re 45 or 50. Then, if you’re lucky, you make terms with life, you get released. Robert Penn
• Happiness never made anyone rich or famous. That must be why ambitious people avoid it. Marty Rubin
• Non-attachment

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Transcend ambition rather than sink below it into apathy

• Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it. Fulke Greville
• Apathy and indifference

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Encourage the ambitions of children

• Every child has great ambitions. As he grows, he is bombarded by negative suggestions — you can’t do this; you can’t do that; be careful; look for security, and so on. Year by year, he experiences the realities of life, and his ambitions fade away. Figuratively speaking, most children die by the time they reach their adulthood. Shall Sinha

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Ambition feeds on the success and ambition of others

• Ambition if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others. Susan Sonrag
• Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another’s fame. Baltasar Gracian

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• Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Timothy Leary
• Ambition is the last refuge of failure. Oscar Wilde
• Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. Charlie McCarthy
• If I weren’t as talented as I am ambitious, I would be a gross monstrosity. Madonna
• I’m tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay. Madonna
• God is not dead but alive and working on a much less ambitious project.
• Gifted Children: Unfortunate tykes who lack the good sense to hide their talents from overly ambitious parents.
• There is not a man in America who has not had a secret ambition to boot an infant. C. Fields
• I’m tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay. Madonna
• Ambition and fleas both jump high. German Proverb
• At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. Salvador Dalí
• By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost
• Most of the people who came for dancing lessons had Rumba ambitions and minuet bodies. Bob Hope
• An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. Ambrose Bierce
• Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. Charlie McCarthy
• According to a British poll, you’ve only got a one in five chance of achieving your childhood career ambition. Which probably explains why you don’t run into that many cowboys, princesses, or space rangers. Jay Leno
• Of course, I’m ambitious. What’s wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day. Ringo Starr

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