Ambition

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Ambition is the possession of motivation for power. Ambitious persons seek power either for themselves or for others.

Sourced [edit]

  • How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking!
  • 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.
  • Things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm.
  • So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.
  • A young man's ambition, can there be a more fleeting prospect?
  • Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
    • Henry Ward Beecher, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 11.
  • 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.
    • Thomas Brooks, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 12.
  • There ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved.
  • Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
  • As fall the dews on quenchless sands,
    Blood only serves to wash Ambition's hands!
  • I think that all ambitions are lawful except those which climb upwards on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so much the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, such ambitions are their own reward.
  • Ambition is like love, impatient
    Both of delays and rivals.
    • John Denham, The Sophy: A Tragedy (1642), Act I, scene ii.
  • Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.
  • Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us.
  • Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
    Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
    Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
    The short and simple annals of the poor.
    • Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750), St. 8.
  • Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.
    • David Hume, The History of England (1754-62), Volume I, Part IV, "William the Conqueror".
  • Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back;
    And is a swelling, and the last affection
    A high mind can put off; being both a rebel
    Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth
    All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion,
    and offereth violence to nature's self.
    • Ben Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene ii.
  • Ambition never comes to an end.
    • Yoshida Kenkō, Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness) (ca. 14th century).
  • Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.
  • Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
  • Whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything.
  • All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority, otherwise called ambition.
  • Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
    The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
  • Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.
  • Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart.
    • Sallust, Bellum Catalinae (ca. 1st century), X, 5.
  • Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition.
  • Ambition is an idol on whose wings
    Great minds are carry'd only to extreme;
    To be sublimely great, or to be nothing.
    • Thomas Southerne, The Persian Prince, or the Loyal Brother (1682), Act I, scene 1.
  • But when a miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, or when an ambitious man thinks of nothing but glory, they are not reckoned to be mad, because they are generally harmful, and are thought worthy of being hated. But, in reality, Avarice, Ambition, Lust, &c., are species of madness, though they may not be reckoned among diseases.
    • Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677), Part IV: "Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions", Prop. 44.
  • Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
    • Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726).
  • 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.
  • 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; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?
  • Full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition.
    • Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC), Book III, 39.
  • When we are beginning to live, then we are dying. There is, therefore, nothing more profitless than ambition.
  • Vain the ambition of kings
    Who seek by trophies and dead things
    To leave a living name behind,
    And weave but nets to catch the wind.
  • Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
    • Oscar Wilde,"Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young", in The Chameleon (Oxford, December 1894).
  • Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 225.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations [edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 20-21.
  • Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
    For sinful man beneath the sky.
    • Christian Year, Morning.
  • Prima enim sequentem, honestum est in secundis, tertiisque consistere.
    • When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.
    • Cicero, De Oratore, I.
  • On what strange stuff Ambition feeds!
  • By low ambition and the thirst of praise.
  • On the summit see,
    The seals of office glitter in his eyes;
    He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels,
    Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,
    And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down,
    And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.
  • Il gran rifiuto.
    • The great refusal.
    • (Supposed to refer to Celestine V., elected Pope in 1294, who resigned five months later).
    • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III. LX.
  • But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
    And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
    • John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 198.
  • They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem
    Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.
  • For all may have,
    If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave.
  • Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
    • I strike the stars with my sublime head.
    • Horace, Carmina, Book I. 1.
  • Nil mortalibus arduum est:
    Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitia.
    • Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we would storm heaven itself in our folly.
    • Horace, Carmina, I. 3. 37.
  • Vestigia nulla retrorsum.
    • No steps backward.
    • Horace, Epistles. I. 1. 74.
  • I see, but cannot reach, the height
    That lies forever in the light.
  • The shades of night were falling fast,
    As through an Alpine village passed
    A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice
    A banner with the strange device,
    Excelsior!
  • He was utterly without ambition [Chas. II.]. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
  • The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one,
    May hope to achieve it before life be done;
    But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes,
    Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows
    A harvest of barren regrets.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part I, Canto II, Stanza 8.
  • Here may we reign secure, and in my choice
    To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell.
    Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
  • But what will not ambition and revenge
    Descend to? who aspires must down as low
    As high he soar'd, obnoxious first or last
    To basest things.
  • If at great things thou would'st arrive,
    Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap,
    Not difficult, if thou hearken to me;
    Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand,
    They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain,
    While virtue, valor, wisdom, sit in want.
  • Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms.
    Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
    Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind.
  • Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise.
    By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies?
    Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
    And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
  • But see how oft ambition's aims are cross'd,
    And chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost!
  • Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest.
  • Licet ipsa vitium sit ambitio, frequenter tamen causa virtutum est.
    • Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
    • Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria, II. 22.
  • Ambition is no cure for love!
    • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto I, Stanza 27.
  • O fading honours of the dead!
    O high ambition, lowly laid!
    • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto II, Stanza 10.
  • The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
  • Ill-weav'd ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
    When that this body did contain a spirit,
    A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
    But now, two paces of the vilest earth
    Is room enough.
  • Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
    Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition.
    By that sin fell the angels; how can man then,
    The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
  • 'Tis a common proof,
    That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
    Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
    But when he once attains the upmost round,
    He then unto the ladder turns his back,
    Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
    By which he did ascend.
  • The noble Brutus
    Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious;
    If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
    And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
  • I have no spur
    To prick the sides of my intent, but only
    Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
    And falls on the other.
  • Si vis ad summum progredi ab infimo ordire.
    • If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.
    • Syrus, Maxims.
  • Ambition destroys its possessor.
  • And mad ambition trumpeteth to all.
  • Ambition has but one reward for all:
    A little power, a little transient fame,
    A grave to rest in, and a fading name!

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