Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

If you have a dream, just lie about it. Lie your way unto your dreams.

Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious; not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convince himself.

Or perhaps in Slytherin, you'll make your real friends. Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.

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.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Those are most desirous of honor and glory who cry out the loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world.

Ambition is the Subtlest Beast of the Intellectual and Moral Field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.

People are always trying to be on top. And not always with a macabre agenda, but I think that people are desperately trying to remain in control, rather than being honest.

If I was happy with three trophies, then suddenly I had to have four. If I was happy with four, then I had to have five.

I feel a huge gratification out of being right. To see my projects connect in a way in which the audience is passionate is a huge compliment. For me it's like, if a person is ambitious enough, they run in a tunnel that doesn't end...And I learn things about myself all the time.

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

All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies.

I was very driven, very focused, very ambitious. I mean, when I look back on myself in my 20s, part of me just cringes.

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.

And now, when I have summed up all my store, Thinking (so I myself deceive) So rich a chaplet thence to weave As never yet the King of Glory wore, Alas! I find the serpent old, That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold With wreaths of fame and interest.

To talk only about national security, national defense, means to be selfish, ambitious. It is discrimination, isolation. "It is just me. What do I care about others?"

The value of an ambitious goal is not measured by what it will bring to you. The worth of a goal is measured by what it will make of you in the process of following and attaining it.

What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.

Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.

In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon turned out to be a spineless, grinning idiot.

Petra turned to her. "Everybody lies about who they are. Name one person here who isn't doing that and I will drop out right now!" Shanti felt that snake of truth coil around her legs, threatening to squeeze. "I didn't mean..." "No one ever does." Petra said, shoving the baton back at Shanti.

By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

Oftentimes great and open temptations are the most harmless because they come with banners flying and bands playing and all the munitions of war in full view, so that we know we are in the midst of enemies that mean us damage, and we get ready to meet and resist them. Our peculiar dangers are those that surprise us and work treachery in our fort.