Ruthless Ambition Quotes & Sayings

His enemies said he [Robert Kennedy] was consumed with selfish ambition, a ruthless opportunist exploiting his brother's legend. But he was too passionate and too vulnerable ever to be the cool and confident operator his brother was. — Jack Newfield

A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist. — Karl Popper

For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow. men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. — Albert Einstein

But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. — Alexander Hamilton

I do not deny my German identity. But I also feel Swiss. Of my eight great-grandparents, seven were born Swiss. I have been living in Switzerland for more than 50 years. — Klaus Schwab

How could one comfort a disturbed person? He is already assailed with doubts about his faith. He would have to despair with such a doctrine. Rather one must seek to convince him that the Savior is there for him, has already forgiven him, and has already accepted him. As soon as one makes faith even in the least a requirement for justification, one takes from such a person all the comfort of the Gospel. — C.F.W. Walther

It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. — Lee Atwater

The gods, if they exist, are just the people who happen to live on the other side. — Brendan Myers

So, once again, back to the question - just what IS power?
Is it perhaps no more than a deadly mutation of ambition, one that may or may not translate into social activity? Any fool, any moron, any psychopath can aspire to the seizure and exercise of power, and of course the more psychopathic, the more efficient: Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Sergeant Doe and the latest in the line of the unconscionably driven, our own lately departed General Sanni Abacha - all have proved that power, as long as you are sufficiently ruthless, amoral and manipulative, is within the grasp of even the mentally deficient. — Wole Soyinka

There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

Mr Earbrass was virtually asleep when several lines of verse passed through his mind and left it hopelessly awake. Here was the perfect epigraph for TUH:
A horrid ?monster has been [something] delay'd
By your/their indiff'rence in the dank brown shade
Below the garden ...
His mind's eye sees them quoted on the bottom third of a right-hand page in a (possibly) olive-bound book he read at least five years ago. When he does find them, it will be a great nuisance if no clue is given to their authorship. — Edward Gorey

Why does everybody have to be with somebody? It's a stupid delusion and a really pathetic way of thinking. — J.A. Redmerski

Some stories, my property, have been stolen. Someone's appropriated them. It's an illicit act. It's unfair. Suppose you had a coat you liked, and somebody went into your closet and stole it. That's how I feel. — J.D. Salinger

Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be appreciated. Every person needs that blessing. — Joel Osteen

Better to be the hunter than the hunted. Even if you're hunting yourself. — Jennifer Niven

Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on. — Gail Sheehy

Capitano Perduto, I'm a firm believer that you have to taste a country's soul to understand it and to grasp its people. And by soul I mean what grows there, what its people see and smell and touch every day, what travels through them and shapes them from the inside out. — Nina George

If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them. — Irvin D. Yalom

Yesterday was Election Day. If we have any Democrats in the audience, I'm sorry but you're going to have to give up your seats. — David Letterman

Too many people want the fruit of Paul's ministry without paying the price that Paul paid. He died. He died to everything. He died daily He was crucified with Christ ... I challenge you to pray this prayer: 'Lord, be ruthless with me in revealing my selfish ambition and my lack of willingness to die to myself.' I guarantee that He will answer your prayer - and quickly. — Floyd McClung

If I could mimic the dynamic of any Shakespearean marriage, I'd choose to mimic the Macbeths - before the murder, ruthless ambition, and torturous descents into madness and death, that is. — Jillian Keenan

Famine is good to the corn-merchant, evil to the poor, and indifferent to those whose fortunes can at all times command a superfluity. Ambition is evil to the restless bosom it inhabits, to the innumerable victims who are dragged by its ruthless thirst for infamy, to expire in every variety of anguish, to the inhabitants of the country it depopulates, and to the human race whose improvement it retards; it is indifferent with regard to the system of the Universe, and is good only to the vultures and the jackals that track the conqueror's career, and to the worms who feast in security on the desolation of his progress. It is manifest that we cannot reason with respect to the universal system from that which only exists in relation to our own perceptions. — Christopher Hitchens