The Universe is not required to be in accordance with Human ambition. ~ Carl Sagan

***
Only the dead have seen the end of war. – Attributed to Plato

Ever since childhood I have scorned the commonplace limits so often set upon human ambition. Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and
unassuming manner of life is best for everyone; best both for the body and the mind.
~Albert Einstein~

If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
~ Nadine Gordimer ~

They conceived the evidence that would carry the vital intellectual argument, but at its core lay flawed science, dubious methodology and wishful thinking. Clustered around the peppered moth is a swarm of human ambition, and self-delusions shared among some of the most renowned evolutionary biologists of our era.
~Judith Hoper - Of Moths and Men (2002) pp.xix-xx ~

"Do all things with love." Og Mandino

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. -Robert F. Kennedy

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for. -John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

The greatest discoveries of science have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it. ~Robert L. Park


s-

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I would rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity.
***
A man can't deny what he is. He can convince everybody else he is someone else, but never himself.

Ambition — it is the last infirmity of noble minds.~J.M. Barrie. Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937). British playwright and novelist.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.~Edmund Burke (1729-97), Irish-born British statesman and political philosopher.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.~Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Polish-born British novelist. (Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski). A Personal Record (1912).

Ambition is but avarice on stilts and masked.
~Walter Savage Landor

As falls the dew on quenchless sands,
blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.
~Lord Byron

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
~Milan Kundera

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.
~Alexander Pope

"Recall that a virtue is a midpoint between an excess and a deficiency in terms of taking account of one's emotions, abilities, and circumstances. If this is the case, then we ought to be able to give an account of the excess and deficiency that might sit on either side of ambition."
~ "Harry Potter And Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts" By Shawn E. Klein, David Baggett

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. Plan more than you can do, then do it.
~ Anonymous

--
Mathcounts Central

In contrast to the inspiring quote from enola_catori, I would rather drink from the cup of mediocrity than die of thirst.

"The question that is so clearly in many potential parents' minds: ""Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?"""

Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883 - 1950) Moravian-US "economist, sociologist"
"""Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,"" ch. 14, 1942."

"Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express."

Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719) English "poet, essayist, playwright"
"In The Ultimate Success Quotations Library, 1997."

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Driftwood; Table Talk, 1857

The known shortness of life, as it ought to moderate our passions, may likewise, with equal propriety, contract our designs. There is not time for the most forcible genius, and most active industry, to extend its effect beyond a certain sphere. To project the conquest of the world is the madness of mighty princes; to hope for excellence in every science has been the folly of literary heroes: and both have found as last, that they have panted for a height of eminence denied to humanity, and have lost many opportunities of making themselves useful and happy, by a vain ambition of obtaining a species of honour, which the eternal laws of Providence have placed beyond the reach of man.
-- Samuel Johnson, Rambler #17 (May 15, 1750)

A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won't be so hard in the end to lie down and rest.
-- Pearl Bailey

Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus's-flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition.
-- Jack Handey

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
-- Jonathan Swift

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much love, light and laughter,
ananya.