“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

There’s a starting place. And that starting place for everyone is ambition. We’re all scared of that word today because they made it bad in the late ’80s. As if desire is not a good thing.

Ambition is the great fire, it’s the liberator of the unconscious person. No goals, no growth; no clarity, no change.

Become the leader of your life. Lead yourself to where you want to be. Breathe life back into your ambitions, your desires, your goals, your relationships.

The ambitious are criticized by those that have given up.

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.