Advanced Search

Enjoy all you have while pursuing all you want.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Until you've explicitly defined your life's goals and aspirations, you can't really know what tradeoffs you're willing to make to reach them.

A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place.

Note: Older EBF articles are not currently online. I'm not sure if this is temporary or permanent. If you click you will be taken to the Archive.org site to find an archived copy.

---

Ambition drastically discounts the value of anything achieved in the present, while overvaluing what may be possible in the future.

Ambitious people don't like failing or looking stupid. As the social scientist Chris Argyris (one of the fathers of organizational-learning theory) put it, smart people have trouble learning because it involves so much floundering and failure.

Every great leader begins with a great dream. Ambitious visions not only require a capacity for meaningful change, but also provide the energy and inspiration to engage others. These tasks -- articulating a dream and rallying others around it -- are the essence of leadership. The study of leaders in every field tells us that leadership is the residue of ambition… Great leaders have an ambition marked by a greater sense of purpose, an urge to create something beyond oneself. Whether to provide the best product or service in the industry or to eradicate childhood disease, their ambition extends beyond the accumulation of wealth or power.