We grow small trying to be great.

E. Stanley Jones

   
Beware of ambition!  It's one of the true double-edged swords. . . . depending upon how we define it, it may be one of our great motivators that helps us to grow and learn and become who we're meant to be, or one of our great destroyers that holds us down and turns us into something we never imagined, in our worst nightmares, that we ever would become as human beings.

     

It is the nature of ambition to make people 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

   
It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.

Seneca
  
  
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

Niccolò Machiavelli
   

Noble people compare and estimate themselves by an idea which is higher than themselves; and a mean person, by one lower than him- or herself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar person aspires.

Henry Ward Beecher

 

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

William Shakespeare

   

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To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection
of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but
to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry,
is as vain and little as the things are which we court.

Philip Sidney

   

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence
of childhood is lost:  when the child is infected with the
desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of
people who are striving might and main to become, not
what Nature intended them to be-- musicians, cooks,
mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors-- but
"somebody":  to become successful, famous, powerful;
to become something that will bring not quiet and
self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self-expansion.

Tony deMello

   

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows
more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

Thomas Otway

   
All ambitions are lawful except those which
climb upward on the miseries or credulities of humankind.

Joseph Conrad
  

Fling away ambition.  By that sin angels fell.  How then can
humans, the image of their Maker, hope to win by it?

William Shakespeare (attributed)

  

  
Ambition is the last refuge of failure.

Oscar Wilde

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


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite.

Henry Wheeler Shaw

It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.

William Cobbett

What is ambition but desire of greatness?
  And what is greatness but extent of power?

Thomas Higgons

  
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain,
ambitious people still climb and climb, with great labor,
and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.

Robert Burton
  

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.

Lucy Maud Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables

  

A wise person is cured of ambition by ambition itself; one's aim is
so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favor cannot satisfy him or her.

Jean La Bruyere

  
Undoubtedly, ambition stands in the way of more people's contentment and happiness than almost anything else.  The foolish determination to do what others do, to get ahead of others and to be able to live as they do, to have the luxuries and comforts of people who are better off than they—this over-vaulting ambition is one of the great happiness enemies.

It is a false ambition which keeps us pulling and hauling and straining to do something which somebody else has done, not because we need it ourselves, not because it would add a particle to our comfort or real welfare, or because it is really worth while, but because we are eaten up with the canker of an over-vaulting ambition, the chief element of which is selfishness, the desire to outshine others, to outdo them, to get ahead of them, to live a little better off than they, to have a little better home, a little better house in a little better part of the town, to dress our children a little better, to surround ourselves with more luxuries.  But, after all, are these things really helpful, are they really worth while?

Growth, enlargement of life, enrichment of one's nature —these are the things that are worth while.  It is the ambition to be a human, to stand for more in the community, to push our horizon of ignorance farther and farther away from us, to think a little higher each day, to think a little more of ourselves, to have a little more faith in ourselves and in everybody else, an ambition to be of real use in the world, which, if achieved, will bring contentment and true happiness.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living (1913)
   

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Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice
makes concerning wealth.  It begins by accumulating power as a means
to happiness, and finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

Charles Caleb Colton
    

Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of
the ambition is intellectual.  For ambition even of this
quality, is but a form of self-love.

Henry Taylor

  

If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace
to stop at the second or even the third place.

Cicero

   

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The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious.
The desire to reach hearts is wise.

Maya Angelou

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

Aristotle
Politics
   

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

Salvador Dalí

   

   

The biggest changes in a women's nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition.

Rabindranath Tagore

  
People who are intelligently ambitious are always looking at the wider
picture.  They look for opportunities to contribute.  They look for
what needs to be done.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day
  

If people hold no ambitions in this world, they suffer unknowingly.
If people hold ambitions, they suffer knowingly, but very slowly.

Alan Lightman
Einstein's Dreams

  

In their hurry to attain some ambition, to gratify the dream of life,
people often throw honor, truth, and generosity to the winds.

William G. Jordan

  
  
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
  

There was no more dangerous kind of madman than one who devoted
a good brain and a courageous heart to unhealthy ambitions.

Michael Moorcock
The City in the Autumn Stars

  

Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the
apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.

Mary Shelley

   

  
Ambition renders the mind restless.  If the ambition is not realized,
the mind is filled with depression and anxieties.
The ambitious person has no peace of mind.

Sivananda
  

We have tried the ways of ambition, of self-aggrandizement, of aggressive
opportunism, and we have seen the kind of flimsy success to which they lead;
we have tasted the bitter poisons they generate, we have known the conflict,
the disgust, the inner division, the outer isolation that follow in their wake.

Gregory Vlastos

  

No ambition is spiritual.  All ambitions or for the sake of the "I am."  If
you want to make real progress you must give up the idea of personal
attainment.  The ambitions of so-called spiritual teachers are preposterous.

Nisargadatta

  
Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power, that avarice
makes as to wealth.  She begins by accumulating it as a means of
happiness, and finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

Charles Caleb Colton
  

Ambition is the first curse:  the great tempter of the person who is
rising above his or her fellows.  It is the simplest form of
looking for a reward. . . Yet it is a necessary teacher.

Mabel Collins

  

If you pride yourself on your ambition, take a mental inventory of
its ends, and ask yourself whether you desire to attain those
personal ends and forego the opportunities of being happy.

Walter B. Wolfe

  

    

Alone in his car heading west, it's easy for Jason
to feel sorry for himself and mad at the world.  But
then he gives a ride to Hector and learns that life
isn't nearly as negative as we sometimes see it,
and that the prejudice and discrimination that
he's experiencing aren't unique to him--and aren't
impossible to overcome.  The friendship between
this young man and his 70-year-old passenger is
an inspiring story of love and dealing with
obstacles in our lives.    
Book - Kindle