My ambition was to stop waiting tables. That was how I measured success: finally I was able to stop waiting tables and I was able to pay the rent and that was by being a stand-up comic. Not a very good stand-up comic but good enough to make a living.

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.

Ambition is the path to success persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life it supports them all lends strength to them all ambition cruelty avarice revenge are all founded on lust.

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable and have every word received with a religious respect.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

I will go to the next election saying to Australians vote for me vote for the Liberal Party and I will become your PM. So I'm offering myself as the alternative PM - that's one way people describe the Leader of the Opposition - but I'm not in politics for myself to realize a personal ambition.

I didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very very key ambitions in politics not least social mobility and life chances that I care about as passionately if not more.