Ambition Sayings and Quotes
Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old ambition quotes, ambition sayings, and ambition proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.
“
Ambition is a good servant but a bad master.
“
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 principles which direct them.
“
Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.
“
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
“
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.
“
Ambition beats genius 99% of the time
“
A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm--it can creep, but it cannot fly.
“
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower, by reason of our blindness. But alas, when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of real misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us; in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle where we have nothing to hope, but everything to fear.
“
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
“
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
“
Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
“
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.
“
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
“
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.
“
Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme, to be sublimely great, or to be nothing.
“
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.
“
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.
“
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
“
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.
“
Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
“
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
“
Say what we will, we may be sure that ambition is an error. Its wear and tear on the heart are never recompensed.
“
It will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two.
“
Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
“
Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases.
“
Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame, A grave to rest in, and a fading name!
“
Ambition destroys its possessor.
“
Ambition begets vexations.
“
If you would get ahead, be a bridge.
“
Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky.
“
Ambition and the belly are the two worst counselors.
“
Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
“
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
“
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
