Unbridled Ambition Quotes

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

A rigid, fanatic, ambitious, selfishly partisan and sectional turncoat with too much genius and too little common sense, who will either die a traitor or a madman.

Runty little bastard…just about the most dangerous person around [with a] powerful constituency.

Hitler was undoubtedly a genius but he lacked self-control. He recognized no limits. Otherwise the thousand-year Reich would have lasted more than twelve years.

Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable …

Reading Shakespeare we see that power can be poisonous. In the case of Bush and Cheney testosterone can be poisonous.

The real Jack Johnson was both more and less than those who loved or those who hated him ever knew. He embodied American individualism in its purest form; nothing - no law or custom, no person white or black, male or female - could keep him for long from whatever he wanted.

I look at myself at 19 and think I would never do what I did then now! I was so brazen, so confident, so fearless in a way. And remember, the world was a very aggressive place then.

Man's greed to obtain something for nothing has never yet been able to content itself with a moderate profit.

Kings are but men, are subject to all the passions and frailties of human nature, and consequently are too prompt to grasp at arbitrary power, and to wish to make all things bend and submit to their will & pleasure.

Britain and the US remain the Wild West for ideas, where pioneers push each other towards ever greater heights in the white heat of free enterprise. No one knows their place, no one fears failure and no one is ashamed of success.

A tyrant is a man who sacrifices a whole nation to his ideal or his ambition.

Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.

The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

All Kings are to be reckon'd amongst ravenous Beasts

An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.

When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless.

The vainglory of wishing to understand is dangerous, immoral and, above all, old-fashioned. The modern way – perhaps the final way - is to say: Go forward, without knowing why, as quickly as possible.

The American way of life, as I see it, is really the American way of death. Everything is determined by greed and the insatiable desire to be the richest and most powerful. And that desire is limitless.

There was a much more self-destructive nature in 'Appetite.' It was a going-for-it-at-all-cost thing that worked then.

I've always been of the opinion that great talent can't be held down.

Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. In fact, there are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name.

We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience.

I hate that 'I got it' stuff. That drives me nuts. It's that natural instinct that everything's OK because you're winning.