Famous quotes containing the word ambition:
“My ambition for station was always easily controlled. If the place came to me it was welcome. But it never seemed to me worth seeking at the cost of self-respect, or independence. My family were not historic; they were well-to-do, did not hold or seek office. It was easy for me to be contented in private life. An honor was no honor to me, if obtained by my own seeking.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It was almost two years ago, while awaiting the imminent birth of my second child, that I decided to start working part-time. This would have been unthinkable to me when I was younger. At twenty-five I should have worn a big red A on my chest; it would have stood for ambition, an ambition so brazen and burning that it would have reduced Hester Prynne’s transgression to pale pink.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)