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.
I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human. . . . We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom.
To want to become the President is, I think, such a bizarre ambition that it is automatically deranging.
Ambition displeases when it has been sated. . . having reached the peak, it aspires to descend.
I've always been afraid of video games - not afraid that I wouldn't like them, but that I would like them too much, and that after mere seconds in front of any particularly bright and absorbing game, I would abandon all ambition, turn into a mouth-breathing zombie, and develop a wide, sofa-shaped rear end.
They that soar too high, often fall hard.
It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction. . . [n]ot even when confronted by infinity.
My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good books: 'the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. '
Remarkable places are like the summits of rocks; eagles and reptiles only can get there.
I don't have specific television ambitions in the sense that I remain fundamentally and academic, and so, my innermost ambitions are what's the next discovery I can make; that's in my direct center.
As long as you're going to think anyway, think big.
If you strip away self-effacement, charm and the spirit of mischief-qualities that make determination and ambition tolerable- you're left with a right ar**hole.
The authority and influence of France on the world scene in the 21st century will not depend solely on its modernity and cohesion, nor even on the continuity and professionalism of its foreign policy. France will be heeded if it has a message to convey. Faced with the temptations of laissez-faire, France must stand out as the nation with the imagination and determination to pursue an ambition that combines cogency with generosity.
To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.
A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices, and ambitions of their leaders is a democracy.
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?
I think my greatest ambition in life is to pass on to others what I know.
For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant. It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.
The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men. . . but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God.