Anthony Trollope Quotes

There are politicians who seethe with ambition all the time, and there are a lot of other politicians who don't. I'm in the second category, that's all.

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

You don't go into politics unless you want to win.

I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy.

My first real experience of ambition was as party leader. It was my ambition for Labour to win, in which event I would be prime minister.

I never thought that I could reach such a high political position. But I have always been ready to serve my country.

Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.

Mitt Romney is a nice guy. But, we know where nice guys finish in politics.

No doubt it was better to have become president than not.

Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history.

My father ran for Congress in 2004, and I got a sense that there is no way to achieve much success without a certain amount of compromise.

The first years in Parliament I did nothing - nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.

I have not yet met the politician who did not start to dream of the next highest office the minute that he was sworn in.

It doesn’t matter, this young man will never go far in politics.

Yes! I have climbed to the top of that greasy pole.

The general impression of course is that you would be most foolish to take the Vice Presidency .... if I were a candidate for the Presidency, I would take the Vice Presidency in a minute at this juncture. My belief in your taking it arises from my conviction that it is the true stepping-stone for you .... The Vice Presidency is the better path to better and more important things.

Political ambition, like other kinds of ambition, is a basic human appetite …. Like other human appetites, ambition is not evenly distributed among the population, but enough people with substantial political ambition are naturally drawn to political careers to make the problem of controlling it a major aspect of constitutional government.

Men in political life must be ambitious.

A man’s got to walk if he is going to be in politics.

Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times.

Of course I want to be president, I want to win, but I also want to be sincere.

Let me make one thing clear. I have never considered mere survival in power as any achievement, just as I have never seen coming to power as an achievement in itself.

I had dreams of high political office.

You can have a value system and be unable to totally live it.