“An average person with average talents and average ambition can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society; if that person has clear focused goals.”

We didn’t set the world on fire from the first day. Disappointments, setbacks and work created the company as it is today.

Forcing myself to think positively did wonders for my spirit. I was able to overcome the discontent inside me, and my old enthusiasm slowly returned.

I believe that most successful people are ordinary people with extraordinary determination.

People often resist change when they don’t participate in the decision-making process. Some of the best leaders ‘plant the seed’ that permits others to propose the idea and take credit for it!

Help other people get what they want – and you’ll get what you want.

Be a dreamer. Have a sense of greatness. It has been said that if you can dream it, you can do it. And I believe that. Before your dream can become a reality, you have to see it in your own mind; see its fulfillment, whatever it may be.

You are the only boss you have. And I want you to be the most demanding boss that you can be. If you really want to make a success of this business, then you must put yourself on a schedule.

Hope is wishing for something to come true. Faith is belief that it will come true. Believe that for every problem God gives you, He will also provide you with a solution.

For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

You can’t stand still. You either go forward or backward.

Dare to risk public criticism.

Even the smallest achievements pave a way to great success.

Some people drift through their entire life. They do it one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time. It happens so gradually they are unaware of how their lives are slipping away until it’s too late.

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

I believe that you should praise people whenever you can; it causes them to respond as a thirsty plant responds to water.

Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.

What great changes have not been ambitious?

Without my mother’s ambition, her drive, I doubt that on my own I would have pushed myself out of Pozzuoli and into the frightening world that was faraway Rome.

Ambition is when you close the gap between your circumstances and expectations.

What we have, what we wish we had – ambitions fulfilled, ambitions disappointed, investments won, investments lost, elections won, elections lost – these things may occupy our attention, but they do not define us.

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

There is, however, another purpose to which academies contribute. When they consist of a limited number of persons, eminent for their knowledge, it becomes an object of ambition to be admitted on their list.

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained – who can say this is not greatness?

I am not ambitious to appear a man of letters: I could be content the world should think I had scarce looked upon any other book than that of nature.