Desire for Recognition Quotes

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

Of all the passions that inspire a man in a battle, none, we have to admit, is so powerful and so constant as the longing for honor and reknown.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation.

Everybody wants to be somebody. Everybody wants to be noticed. Everybody wants to be somebody important. Importance is just treating people good. That's important.

I'm a man, and I think every man wants to be No. 1.

Vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.

Such is the love of praise, so great the anxiety for victory.

There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life.

The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

People look at fame and feel deprived if they haven't got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right, a civil right. And also feel the same way about wealth, I suppose - why haven't I got it?

Even for learned men, love of fame is the last thing to be given up.

I think most of us are torn. We have at least two people at war in our body. One person wants to retire and grow fabulous tomatoes, and the other wants to stand up on a pedestal and be worshipped and get bigger and bigger and bigger until she explodes.

I am young and avid for glory.

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

All human beings hunger for appreciation.

I was obsessed with being rich and famous.

I didn't feel entitled to become a star. I didn't expect it.

Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.

Men seek fame and high places only to learn that they were happier in obscurity

Why do men seek honour? Surely in order to confirm the favorable opinion they have formed of themselves.

We hate merit while it is with us; when taken away from our gaze, we long for it jealously.

You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero!... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.

The love of fame is a love that even the wisest of men are reluctant to forgo.