“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”
-- Henry Ward Beecher
“Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought.”
-- Henri Bergson
“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”
-- William Blake
“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.”
-- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), politician, B&P 4/18/03
“He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.”
-- Lord Byron
“Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
-- Thomas Carlyle
“The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.”
-- Herbert N. Casson
“Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.”
-- Miguel de Cervantes
“Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.”
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.”
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
“When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.”
-- Cicero
“The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.”
-- Cicero
“A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. You must act as you breathe.”
-- Georges Clemenceau
“When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.”
-- Georges Clemenceau
“All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.”
-- Joseph Conrad
“A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn’t particularly feel like it.”
-- Alistair Cooke, writer, QFTM 4/26/03
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”
-- Benjamin Disraeli
“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.”
-- George Eliot
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Hitch your wagon to a star.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”
-- Thomas Dunn English
“It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.”
-- Anatole France
“The best way out is always through.”
-- Robert Frost
“Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
“Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.”
-- Giuseppe Garibaldi
“Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.”
-- Heinrich Heine
“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.”
-- Horace
“Positive anything is better than negative nothing.”
-- Elbert Hubbard
“Some folks can look so busy doing nothin’ that they seem indispensable.”
-- Kin Hubbard
“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.”
-- David Hume
“We grow small trying to be great.”
-- E. Stanley Jones
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
-- Robert F. Kennedy
“Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.”
-- William Lilly
“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
-- John Locke
“Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.”
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, QFTM 4/26/03
“Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.”
-- Niccolò Machiavelli
“Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.”
-- Peter Marshall
“You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say.”
-- John N. Mitchell
“Ambition is not a vice of little people.”
-- Michel de Montaigne
“A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward.”
-- George Jean Nathan
“Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends.”
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
“Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.”
-- Thomas Otway
“The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.”
-- William Penn
“Mix a conviction with a man and something happens.”
-- Adam Clayton Powell, congressman, QFTM 4/26/03
“Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”
-- Pat Riley, basketball coach
“Someone once asked me what I want on my epitaph when I pass away. Just the
words - ‘I tried.’ That’s what this game of life is all about. Trying. There’s the tryers, the criers, and the liars.”
-- Mickey Rooney, entertainer, QFTM 10/25/03
“We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst knows that if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt
“It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.”
-- Seneca
“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.”
-- William Shakespeare
“Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”
-- William Shakespeare
“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”
-- William Shakespeare
“To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and little as the things are which we court.”
-- Philip Sidney
“There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves.”
-- Arthur P. Stanley
“Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices: so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.”
-- Jonathan Swift
“If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.”
-- Publilius Syrus
“Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.”
-- Daniel Webster
“Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.”
-- Alfred North Whitehead
“Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.”
-- William Wordsworth
“Too low they build who build below the skies.”
-- Edward Young
“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”
-- Booker T. Washington
“Ambition is the last refuge of failure.”
-- Oscar Wilde
