Is being "ambitious" ; automatically a good thing?

Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian. He was, however, a smart politician when it came to the fortunes of the King's Men.

gracesmum what a boring play Macbeth would have been if Shakespeare had been historically accurate; not to mention Richard III.

I won the granny race at GDS's Nursery "Olympics" !! There was only one other competitor - a grandpa and he very gallantly let me win didn't object to being beaten

ej and Laidback - Enjoyed both posts.

Oooh I love the idea of the 100m zimmer with or without shopper basket

Was there a granny race in the Olympics – and we won medals?

Oh this is interesting. I work in the Arts. Many people I work with are incredibly ambitious. They need/ want to be seen as innovative and original. My job is to encourage and facilitate their ideas and bring them to fruition.I'm not ambitious in that respect. If a determined project interests me I'll climb on board n do my utmost to make it happen. Ultimately I am not ambitious, I don't need to be seen to be doing or achieving a certain thang, but I do aspire to be the best I can be at what I do.I do get a hell of a lot of freelance work by being incredibly intuiative and supportive and working alongside brilliant people, and at a practical level making it all happen.

nanaej no argument with that.

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Agree about the need to pee. And hunger.

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.

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

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.

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.

Thanks absent

Wise words anno.

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!

Everyone can have aspirations but perhaps not everyone has ambition.