Ambition: Naked Intent

Whether a train driver or astronaut, we all want to be something or someone. But, some want a little bit more.

They are consumed by an obsessive desire to control the marketing department or to run their own business empire. Of course, it would be wrong to condemn all ambitious people as blinkered obsessives who should be speedily despatched to their nearest psycho-analyst, but only a little.

Here is a collection of ambition-related insights. – Stuart Crainer

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[testimonial company=”Roman Emperor and part-time philosopher” author=”Marcus Aurelius Antonius” ]A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Leo Burnett” company=”Advertising agency founder”]When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Warren Buffett” company=”American investment guru”]I don’t try to jump over seven-foot bars. I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Joseph Conrad” company=”Polish-born novelist”]All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Ralph Waldo Emerson” company=”American poet”]Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Jerome K Jerome” company=”Thames-inspired writer”]Ambition is only vanity ennobled.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Lao-Tzu” company=”Chinese philosopher “]He who stands on tiptoe does not stand firm.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Jonathan Swift” company=”British writer “]Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Daniel Webster” company=”American statesman”]There is always room at the top.[/testimonial]
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[testimonial company=”Poet” author=”Jean de La Bruyère” ]There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one’s own industry or by the stupidity of others.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Robert Burton” company=”British clergyman and writer”]Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb with great labour and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Samuel Butler” company=”British poet and satirist”]A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Oliver Cromwell” company=”British soldier and statesman “]No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Heraclitus” company=”Greek philosopher”]The way up and the way down are one and the same.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Ben Jonson” company=”Elizabethan playwright”]Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”George Bernard Shaw” company=”Irish playwright”]The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.[/testimonial]

[testimonial author=”Margaret Thatcher” company=”British Prime Minister “]People think that at the top there isn’t much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.[/testimonial]

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