“Honesty is negative and sterile; it is ignorant of the correct evaluation of appetite and ambition – the only powers through which you can found anything durable.”
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Octave Mirbeau 23
French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, … 1848–1917Related quotes

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)
Source: Social Costs of Business Enterprise, 1963, p. 12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

“It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.”
Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 18

The Art of Loving (1956)
Context: Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

“Presidential ambition is a disease which can only be cured by embalming fluid.”
Quoting from Estes Kefauver
Misattributed