Very few people are ambitious in the sense of having a specific image of what they want to achieve. Most people's sights are only toward the next run, the next increment of money.
~ Judith M. Bardwick

Ambition -- it is the last infirmity of noble minds.
~ Sir James M. Barrie

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
~ Ambrose Bierce

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
~ Robert Browning

Ambition is not what man does... but what man would do.
~ Robert Browning

'Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
~ Robert Browning

What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me.
~ Robert Browning

Ambition can creep as well as soar.
~ Edmund Burke

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
~ Robert Burton

As falls the dew on quenchless sands, blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.
~ Lord Byron

He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.
~ Lord Byron

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.
~ Herbert N. Casson

Big results require big ambitions.
~ James Champy

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
~ Marcus T. Cicero

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.
~ Marcus T. Cicero

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
~ Charles Caleb Colton

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
~ Joseph Conrad

I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.
~ James R. Cook