A Quote by Michel de Montaigne

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

Michel de Montaigne

Quote Topics

Ambition Little Little People People Vice

Quote Author

Michel de Montaigne
French - Philosopher
February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592

People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.

Bob Dylan

There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

You need just the right amount of ambition . . . If you have too little ambition, you don't push or work hard. If you have too much ambition, you put yourself ahead of others, elbow them out of your way.

Andy Grove

Musically, I have little ambition. The only real ambition I have is to make music and do music whenever I feel like it, without any real ambition or planning.

Floor Jansen

Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.

Quintilian

Ambition, in a private man is a vice, is in a prince the virtue.

Philip Massinger

Vice goes along way towards making life bearable. A little vice now and then is relished by the best of men.

Finley Peter Dunne

The philosophy I shared... was one of ambition - ambition to succeed, ambition to grow, ambition to move forward - backed up by hard work.

Frank Lowy

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.

Loretta Young

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

Quintilian

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

Quintilian

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Hosea Ballou

The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.

Tom Peters

We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.

Rajneesh

I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of education, the viceof religion, is one with that of the private life.