Theme of Discussion Zoom Meeting: Ambition

Email: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com

For several questions, I have provided links that will take you to related online information. Try coming up with your own thoughts first – then investigate the links or ignore them – whatever you wish. If the links don’t work with just clicking your mouse arrow, hold down your Ctrl key as you click. Any problems with a link please let me know: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com

Questions:

1. How would you define ambition?

2. Does ambition lead to frustration or to happiness?

3. How important is ambition to giving a person a purpose in life?

4. Do the most ambitious people tend to be the least content?

5. Do men and women differ in their ambitions?

6. Can your religious background influence your ambition? For example, might girls raised in Jewish families have higher ambitions than girls raised in Christian families? Can other cultural backgrounds influence a youngster’s ambitions?

7. What is the most important ambition a person can have? If the person is a male? A female?

8. What was your greatest ambition as a child?

9. As a child, what nourished your ambition?

10. Does ambition play a less important role in our lives as we reach our senior years?

11. Does ambition have a genetic basis?

12. Have ambitions changed among women over the last fifty years?

13. Is running for political office still primarily a male ambition?

14. Do parents play the major role in determining their children’s ambitions and successes?

15. Might a good name for a child be Ambition? Whether the child was male or female? Can nontraditional names later affect the ambitions and achievements as children grow into adulthood?

16. If a child were named Ambition, might that very name influence the field of work she/he pursues?

17. Can you be a good mother of a young child and still have great professional ambitions?

18. Under what circumstances would you consider a person too ambitious?

19. Imagine knowing the ambition of your favorite political leader? What is that ambition?

20. Imagine you are the President of our Nation: What would be your leading ambition?

21. Can extreme ambition be a mental disability?

22. What are the dangers of becoming too ambitious?

Quotations:

1. “A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.” – Marcus Aurelius

2. “Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.” – Mark Twain

3. “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” – Walter H. Cottingham

4. “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”― Timothy Leary

5. “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”― Maya Angelou

6. “I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody.”― Abraham Lincoln

7. “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” ― Salvador Dali

8. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” -- Helen Keller

9. It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement. – Anthony Trollope

10.“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”-- Bill Bradley

The End