Is being "ambitious" ; automatically a good thing?

^I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.^

Naked ambition didn't do Macbeth a lot of good.

Nor anyone else around him!

I see ambition as a good thing. I fail to see where we would be without it. It goes without saying that progression in life shouldn't be at the expense of compassion. Surely ambition is the major driving force in many fields: science, business, sport etc. I think the OP is confusing ambition with the pursuit of power or money for their own ends. I would always encourage anyone to aim high and do their best, whatever that might be.

We need people who are happy to do a job well without feeling they have to climb to the top of the pile. What a nasty rat race life would be otherwise.

Absent got there with the Macbeth quote before me.

Many people, such as my sister, would be deeply unhappy if they had to take a job with a lot of responsibility and stress. We need more Indians than Chiefs.

Ambition is for the ambitious! High pressure business jobs have never been my scene.

Contentment is valued higher in my book - but may be the ambitious are content with their lot.

In my career I made a conscious decision not to climb the ladder but to stay "on the ground" and care for my patients/clients rather than pen-pushing and form-filling.

I think it depends on what your ambition is. My ambition is to step outside the front door without help. An athlete's might be to win a gold medal.

I think the problem comes when people are encouraged to have naked ambition when the goal is everything no matter how many people you tread on or what you have to do to achieve it. Unfortunately naked ambition seems to have become admirable in some quarters and is promoted as a good thing.

Everyone can have aspirations but perhaps not everyone has ambition.

Ambition is fine so long as it doesn't involve unfairly using other people to achieve your goal. It would be a sad world, with sad people in it, if no one had ambition!

Wise words anno.

Thanks absent

j08 It might be an unproductive world without ambition but I am not sure that it would necessarily be sad – or the people in it.

But having ambition is what "gets people out of bed in the mornings".

Without it no progress would be made. Look at Marie Curie and the like.

according to this ambition and aspirations are the same. I think they are too.

Lots of things get people out of bed in the morning from small children to a sense of responsibility – or is that the same thing (then a need to earn a living) – and from hunger to a need to pee.

I think Marie and Pierre Curie's motivation was less to do with ambition and more to do with curiosity.

That was just one example - you know what I mean.

Agree about the need to pee. And hunger.

'Ambition is a good servant but a bad master' - Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Ambition implies a certain ruthlessness. Aspiration doesn't. All a matter of nuances which dictionary definitions don't reflect

As someone commented on R4. I think it was yesterday, the banking crisis was caused by men whose ambitions exceeded their abilities.

I have met people in my field who were clearly very ambitious and saw each job they did as a stepping stone to their goal and on the way if they squashed someone or damaged something so be it! That's personal ambition because the drive is to make gains/ rewards for oneself.

I think some people, like the Curies as they have been mentioned, whose ambition was/is driven by their desire for knowledge and also by the potential positive impact of their discoveries/actions on others. This is more positive ambition because its drive is beyond self interest.

I expect most of us have a combination of both, to varying degrees.

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes, I think its ok if you have none.

My Dad was very humble and did not want to follow in his families footsteps and go into business, he was ok and a very happy and contented man.

So if you aspire to be the best, is that ambitious, or is it ruthless? Was it good when we won Gold medals in the Olympics or a waste of time because everyone didn't win? If one aspiring, ambitious Chief didn't create a business to employ lots of Indians creating the means by which other needy Indians were taken care of, would this be a better world? I fail to see the argument here.

There are degrees of ambition obviously, naked ambition as mentioned, not a good thing, zero ambition, equally bad. Idealising ambition is wrong but denying or disapproving of it particularly if that feeling is passed on to children does them a great disservice and condemns them to a life of mediocrity.

Absent quotes from the Scottish play as presumably an argument against ambition, but the Macbeth immortalised in the play by William Shakespeare is historically inaccurate. In Shakespeare's play, Macbeth is portrayed as a good-hearted general when he was ruler of Moray to King Duncan, but is manipulated by his wife Lady Macbeth and three witches into becoming a villainous, depressive maniac haunted by the murder of Duncan.
In fact Macbeth had as much right as Duncan to the throne and ruled successfully for 17 years. He was generous friend of the church and reported to have made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050 where he gave money to the poor.

Like the much maligned Richard III , not in fact a BAD KING!!

In my professional life I always encouraged and supported children to achieve their best and to learn about, consider & celebrate successful people (current as well as historic)

What we emphasised was that it is always important to challenge yourself to go for personal best in what ever field (academic, arts, sports etc) but we also balanced this with the fact that people have different strengths and interests and all are valuable. Respect and care for peers was also thrown into this equation.

We need individuals with drive and ambition but it needs to be tempered with a sense of responsibility to the wider society in which we function. In competition there are winners and losers. Some winners don't care about making losers, some winners help losers.