A Quote by Jeanette Winterson

I think we still believe that ambition is for boys. — © Jeanette Winterson
I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.
I don't know many ambition- ridden people who really enjoy themselves. Even success doesn't seem to still the insatiable, gnawing hunger of their ambition. Ambition is a good gift, but it cannot be all.
Suddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did.
Often I think boys don’t become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man’s mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there.
Boys are still led to believe that power is associated with domination.
In the older times it was seldom said to little girls, as it always has been said to boys, that they ought to have some definite plan, while they were children, what to be and do when they were grown up. There was usually but one path open before them, to become good wives and housekeepers. And the ambition of most girls was to follow their mothers' footsteps in this direction; a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as well as boys, must often have been conscious of their own peculiar capabilities,--must have desired to cultivate and make use of their individual powers.
I'm old and crazy, but I still give a damn. And I still think the boys got screwed over in Vietnam.
I never had an ambition to go into modeling, originally. I still can't believe how quickly it all took off.
The philosophy I shared... was one of ambition - ambition to succeed, ambition to grow, ambition to move forward - backed up by hard work.
Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred and fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.
I think, living in America, we're so bombarded with God all the time that in certain ways I'm making statements against that bombardment, you know? I think it's crazy. I mean, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I still think about it. And I still write about it.
I can't just sit on my daughter's bed and just say 'n---' all night and then put her to sleep. I just ain't gonna do that... I told the girls that these boys are racists, and they're not nice boys. But I think we can still enjoy the stories about the fishin' and the tradin'.
I am actuated by an ambition which I believe to be an honourable one ? the ambition of serving the great cause of truth, while endeavouring to forward the literature of the country.
To the extent that I can still believe in Bohemia, which I think is very important to me in some way that I don't yet really understand, to the extent that I still believe in that, I have to believe that there are viable degrees of freedom inherent if not realized in interstitial areas.
Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.
I think ambition is a desire for recognition. People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.
Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase By eating, and it fears to starve, unless It still may feed, and all it sees devour; Ambition is not tir'd with toll nor cloy'd with power.
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