“The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition.”
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.
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Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues 60
French writer, a moralist 1715–1747Related quotes
2010s, "Conspiracy Theory"? (August 2019)

As quoted in The Martians of Science : Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (2006) by István Hargittai, p. 251
Context: I believe in excellence. It is a basic need of every human soul. All of us can be excellent, because, fortunately, we are exceedingly diverse in our ambitions and talents.

Quicktime excerpt http://www.harappa.com/nehrumov.html
A Tryst With Destiny (1947)
Context: The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

“Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us.”
"On True Happiness", Pennsylvania Gazette (20 November 1735).
1730s

“Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all.”
Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 77.

Down Among the Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1971] 1973) p. 172.

Quoted in Seeking a Nation Within a Nation, CBC Canada https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP5CH12LE.html