Stephen Vizinczey Quotes

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That's not a guess, it's a guarantee. With pride, it's not a matter of 'if' we will fall, but 'when.' There are no exceptions.

Ambition aspires to descend.

What enables us to achieve our greatness contains the seeds of our destruction.

Ambition's cradle oftenest is its grave

He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other side

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.

Success tempts many to their ruin.

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.

We've seen a lot of people self-destruct because of a small taste of success.

The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.

Nothing fails like success.

The very strength of a nation eventually proves to be its weakness.

Pride is the first step in people unraveling and companies unraveling and relationships unraveling.

My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.

The silent killer of all great men and women of achievement - particularly men, I don't know why, maybe it's the testosterone - I think it's narcissism. Even more than hubris. And for women, too. Narcissism is the killer.

He is such a hysteric that they need not take him seriously … If I know him, he will make one desperate attempt to get into power. If this fails and he does not get his way, he is finished. He will burst into pieces like a frog.

Success can breed all kinds of other behavior and cause companies to behave a certain way that isn't necessarily the ingredients for achieving more success. For instance, with success comes arrogance, and that's typically the death of success.

The status quo leads to self-destruction.

When I'm considering an idea, and there is an element of hubris involved, I generally feel comfortable that it's going to be a good story. Pride goeth before a fall. It's an element of a lot of big stories.

Self-destruction is such an interesting thing for a dramatist, and what's particular to Nixon is how human the failings were that led to his downfall.

Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things, and then something goes wrong - they just don't know when to stop.

The ambition and focus that propel you to success can also be your downfall.

Ego is certainly there in many of the greatest and most dizzying tales of success - but it's there in some of the greatest stories of failure and self-implosion as well.

When we weren't being transcendent we specialized in self-inflicted disaster.