Everybody on this island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is to do something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world the great thing is to have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.

Me only have one ambition, y'know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together - black, white, Chinese, everyone - that's all.

Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply to be what is generally called “a success.

Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty, he is trying to fill his life; the latter reason plays a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches, is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness.

Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can – as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. And not to simply be what is generally called a “success”.

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

Man's desires are, indeed, innumerable, often hopeless, and sometimes vile, but they may all be rolled together into two: the desire to avoid pain, and the desire to experience pleasure. Every conscious movement made by living beings, from oyster to philosopher, is directed toward the accomplishment of one or both of these ends.

My personal aspirations are no different than anyone else’s, we want our families to be healthy and happy and fulfilling. We want our neighborhoods to be neighbourly and have a sense of community. We want to live in peace. Those are my personal aspirations.

The man who seeks one thing in life and but one
May hope to achieve it before life is done;
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows
A harvest of barren regrets.

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. That is my idea. There is no success in life without love and marriage. You had better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the world. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success.

Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.

Man seeks objectives that enable him to convert the attainment of every goal into a means for the attainment of a new and more desirable goal. The ultimate objective in such a sequence cannot be obtainable; otherwise its attainment would put an end to the process. An end that satisfies these conditions is an ideal... Thus the formulation and pursuit of ideals is a means by which to put meaning and significance into his life and into the history of which he is part.

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them? that it was a vain endeavor?

Ma seule ambition était de pouvoir vivre et de pouvoir manger à ma faim...j’aurais parfois mille fois préféré avoir une vie bien simple loin de tout ce tapage inutile, loin de moi de cracher sur la soupe. (My only ambition was to be able to live and to be able to eat when I'm hungry...I would sometimes have preferred a thousand times to have a very simple life far from all this useless noise, far from me to spit on the soup.