National Ambition Quotes

Germany is a young and growing empire. She has a worldwide commerce which is rapidly expanding, and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas. She expects those interests to go on growing, and she must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe. Her horizons stretch far away.

Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world

This uneasy desire to augment our territory has depraved the moral sense and blighted the otherwise keen sagacity of our people.

I incline to an aristocratic republic. This would satisfy the ambitious spirit among our people. We shall learn from the historic mistakes of others in the same way as we learn from our own; for we are a modern nation and wish to be the most modern in the world.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.

This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors

Nations consist of people. And with their effort, a nation can accomplish all it could ever want.

The expenses of war are a moral check, which it has pleased the Almighty to impose upon the ambition and lust of conquest that are inherent in so many nations.

Britain rightly sees herself as a global good citizen, but she must reconcile ambition with power, ends with means - shedding utopian idealism in favour of a more rugged internationalism, putting the national interest first, not last.

As a young nation, pursuing industry in every channel, and adventuring commerce in every sea. It is highly important that we should not only have a pacific character, but that we should really deserve it. If we manifest an unwarrantable ambition, and a rage for conquest, we unite all the great powers of Europe against us.

America will no longer settle for anything less than the best. We must reclaim our destiny.

The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.

Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.

It is sometimes said that because of our past we, as a people, expect too much and set our sights too high. That is not the way I see it. Rather it seems to me that throughout my life in politics our ambitions have steadily shrunk. Our response to disappointment has not been to lengthen our stride but to shorten the distance to be covered. But with confidence in ourselves and in our future what a nation we could be!

Our inexorable destiny is to be a great nation.

A developed India by 2020, or even earlier, is not a dream. It need not be a mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can all take up - and succeed.

Vladimir Putin is a smart guy. I don't like him, smart guy. He is going to advance the cause of Russia until he hits a brick wall. He's hit a brick wall in a few areas. I think we need to make it clear that your growth of the former Soviet Union is over. You can be a great power that's respected. Fine. But this is not going to be the old Soviet Union.

There is a pride which spurs nations on to great achievements

No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country - thus far shalt thou go and no further.

I aim to be a competitive nation.

Long before they slump into poverty, great powers succumb to a poverty of ambition.

We have to be as good as we want to be as a nation.

There's a national ambition, a collective, in a sense, political ambition, which I think is the thing we see from far away. That's the fact that China's building roads and airports and extending its reaches out into the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and in a way that's putting it into some tension with its neighbors.

I truly believe we can be the greatest nation on Earth.