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 principles which direct them.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

It is stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts prosecution.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

Duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

I have to face life with a newly found passion. I must rediscover the irresistible will to learn, to live and to love.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money but him who does it for love of it.

An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas and the truth of prophecy has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover and with the conviction of a geometrician.

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Perfect wisdom has four parts; Wisdom, the principle of doing things right. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.

Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution... that can only weaken the principle of equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Equal Protection Clause.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default; by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

Values are related to our emotions, just as we practice physical hygiene to preserve our physical health, we need to observe emotional hygiene to preserve a healthy mind and attitudes.

Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain forever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I transgress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.

To live is in itself a value judgment. To breathe is to judge.