There’s a long relationship between science fiction and the ‘novel of ideas,’ and I think writers of science fiction are able to draw on that tradition to take risks, to constantly raise the level of their ambition.
Most people I know that are successful have a few things in common that are undeniable: driving ambition, and they have applied that to something they’re good at, that they love doing… and they are fun to be around, especially when they’re talking about their passion.
I entered the navy with the great ambition of becoming a naval soldier and going to war. Either I die from this festering wound – because I refuse to have my arm amputated – or I recover from it and continue being a soldier. I have a one-in-two chance, and I shall bet my life on it!
Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.
My ambition is peace and perfection.
It’s not part of my ambition to become fabulously rich. My plan was always to make my pictures, and hopefully people would buy them, and then I’d buy a studio, buy a house, help friends out, do bits and bobs – but I’ve no idea after that.
I’ve been looking around, and I noticed something: how much you really need to be loved. Ambition isn’t just a desperate quest for positions or money. It’s just love – lots of love.
I do love doing action, but if I can balance the scale by doing other kinds of films that satisfy my creative ambitions, that feels really important.
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
Stupidity and human incompetence are the great evils, not ambition and glory.
American exceptionalism is grounded in the founding of the United States upon an idea, rather than upon the ambitions of men.
You cannot kill a breeze, a wind, a fragrance; you cannot kill a dream or an ambition.
The Y2K bug is a genuine technical concern, consuming the energies of many specialists. But the prophecies of doom represent a broader worldview using the bug as a news hook. In this vision, the good society is a stable society, undisrupted by innovation, ambition or outside influences.
To suggest that Quebecers willingly give up the chance to exercise fully their influence within the federal government would be to betray the historical role Quebec has always played in Confederation, and to undermine the legitimacy of their pride and ambitions.
Accidents on big mountains happen when people’s ambitions cloud their good judgment. Good climbing is about climbing with heart and with instinct, not ambition and pride.
My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that’s what I’m doing.
Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man’s idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.
I love the perspective afforded by having lived five decades, a degree of bemused and muted calm, a relief from the insistent demands of a turbulent ego and rampant ambition. I’d love to stay here forever. But something tells me that 50 is a sunny idyll, a temporary state of grace, a golden afternoon.
My ambition is to not have to work any more. In 10 years I want to stop, and I want to be living with my family, taking care of my house. I want to be a housewife.
Ambition is a form of creativity.
My only ambition was to have 10 children. Fashion was an accident.
I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.
I never get bored talking about themes dealing with ambition, leadership and what it means to be an American. I love that stuff. I just love it. I’ve loved it ever since I was on ‘The West Wing.’
Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists.
I see myself a humble man, and I tell you I have no ambitions to be president.
I didn’t have any ambition to be president. It was fate. The people found me.
All my music has always been about positive, having ambition, having goals, having dreams, and believing in yourself.
The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that.
When I read about Gram Parsons’ dream of this Cosmic American Music when I was in my late teens, that stuck with me: that idea, that ambition, to draw off the roots of music but take it somewhere fresh.
I can’t imagine that I would be the person I am today if, over the last seven years, I had been married to somebody who didn’t feel 100 percent comfortable with my drive, my ambition, my interest in thinking big and swinging for the fences.
Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
Modeling is a great beginning, but it’s also a kind of trap if you have any ambition or a mind that needs to be stimulated.
Ambition is a very good quality to have. Ambition and the competitive spirit go hand in hand.
If you have got a dream and you’ve got ambition, then go for it. You know, unless you try, you’ll never know.
Cycling is a good school for life. It makes you hard and gives you ambition, but you can never say you’ve arrived.
When you have ambition, then it’s never enough to win.
When I was doing fringe theatre, my ambition was to do repertory. When I got to rep it was to do national theatre; then it was t,o get a couple of parts in television. I never had this great desire to overreach myself. I was too busy enjoying acting. I was just obsessed with it.
I don’t find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That’s it. Nothing at all can illuminate the work as far as I can tell.
Of course I have ambitions, even if I don’t play for the national team.
As the country now turns a new leaf, our ambition is to give hope to each and every Afghan.
I invite everyone to chose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.
It’s all about how can you take care of yourself when furthering your life’s goals and ambitions, and purpose and whatever you choose – family, career – to maintain a really balanced, whole, healthy outlook.
We have given ourselves the means of our ambitions, and in football, when we give ourselves the means, it is always less difficult.
I have no real ambition or strategy. If this was all to finish, it’s totally fine. There’s a lot more to do out there than put on silly frocks and shout for a living. I could always go back to, ‘Would you like soup with that?’
All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
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.
My personal ambition remains the same – to be creative, to be modern, to stay one step ahead, to enjoy life.
When I decided to run for Congress, I saw it as an opportunity to serve the South Jersey community that had become my home after signing to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. I didn’t choose public service out of political ambition or a desire for power, and never once thought of making a career of it.
I have lots of ambitions. I’d love to do theatre. I’d like to be in ‘Tea With Mussolini 2;’ I’d like to touch Meryl Streep – which would involve being with her in some exotic location. I have lots of fantastical dreams.
I just wanted to play tennis. It wasn’t a job. It was an ambition. I knew I could make money at it. I was 18 – old enough to think I could do it, young enough not to consider the consequences.
The bulk of mankind have indeed, in all countries in their turn, been made the prey of ambition.
I don’t have massive ambitions to be anywhere other than in this country doing good work.
I was born into a family of gospel singers. My early ambitions were many. I was going to be a ballerina. I almost had that one come true until I tore a tendon, so I transferred from my toes to my throat and that’s where the talent settled.
When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late ’40s.
I think that anyone who likes writing views ‘The New Yorker’ as the, you know, pinnacle of the publishing world. If you get 50 words published in ‘The New Yorker,’ it’s more important than 50 articles in other places. So, would I love to one day write for them? I guess. But that’s not my sole ambition.
It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects… that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.
