How Much and What Kind of Ambition Do We Need?

Ambition, at least in the U.S.A., is considered an admirable quality. Sayings like “breadwinner” and “bring home the bacon” have long referred to men’s roles. These days, the gender specificity of such tasks is often set aside.

Is ambition still a necessity and a quality worthy of applause? That depends.

Eleanor Roosevelt, the wise and independent wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, doubted the virtue of one’s aspirations if they involved conventional success. She chose a different goal.

Your ambition should be to get as much out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply be what is generally called a ‘success.'”

Of course, if you pursue the standard version of striving Mrs. Roosevelt questions, there will often be a predictable downside. L.M. Montgomery put it this way:

We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, the are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.”

I encountered an Ivy League professor who wanted to win renown that would last beyond his lifetime. He became an extraordinary and much-loved teacher but never received the recognition he desired for his research.

His frustration spilled over into his relationships in and out of the family and robbed him of joy.

Ambition can be taken too far. No matter what has already been done, there is always more to accomplish. Indeed, Thomas Merton believed that “When ambition ends, happiness begins.”

A Bulgarian patient of mine characterized the difference between Americans’ nose-to-the-grindstone nature and the fellow citizens he knew in his native land. “Americans live to work, while Bulgarians work to live,” he told me.

Given the punishing aspect of making labor a central focus, one might wish to understand the motivation more. The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius pointed to our concern about the opinions of those around us:

I have often wondered how it is that every man cares about himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

To Marcus, those who did so became slaves to public judgment.

Ayn Rand pushed this idea further. She developed an approach to philosophy called Objectivism. Rand illustrated her beliefs in the character of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. Her protagonist defends his decisions in the course of a trial near the novel’s end:

The creators (of history) were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.

“And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement. … The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself.”

Rand cheered those among us who display this form of egoism, believing it the proper attitude of a logical person. Such a person disdains altruism and puts himself over groups, self-sacrifice, and God.

Nor did Rand believe anyone who adopts this worldview ever needs to deviate from it. She contended that it is the proper way to live.

The 1987 movie Wall Street includes a famous line that you might find consistent with Rand’s view. The words were those of Gordon Gekko, as played by Michael Douglass:

Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

The 18th-century English philosopher Edmund Burke would not have been pleased with either Rand or Gekko:

History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.”

Other reasons for enterprise are not as severe or self-involved as Rand proposed. Status, money, and material objects are sought to impress potential mates and support the well-being of one’s children. 

That said, aspiration is consistent with the idea that wealth and status produce happiness, even though obtaining contentment and joy is more complicated than the ordinary person believes.

My Uncle Samuel endured the misfortune of being raised in an impoverished family during the 1930s. His eldest daughter told me he was forever trying to be the “big guy” among his friends and associates. Sam sought to live in a tony neighborhood and have everything money could buy. 

Despite accomplishing the goals he targeted, his marriage and complicated relationship with his children proved obstacles he could not overcome. Peace of mind eluded him.

Fear and necessity are potent motivators, often the product of want. President Franklin Roosevelt, husband to Eleanor, identified the misfortune attached to poverty when he outlined four freedoms essential to human flourishing. He described them in his address to Congress on January 6, 1941. 

Here is a draft of the final section of his speech, as dictated to and taken down in longhand by Samuel I. Rosenman. Freedom from want is the third of the freedoms identified:

What else fuels our aspirations?

Professional athletes often thrive on competition and the camaraderie of team sports, enjoying their games and desiring excellence and victory for the pleasure, satisfaction, and thrills they confer. Lots of money, too.

We hear much about the importance of doing what you love to have a contented life. Indeed, sometimes, that is the result. Perhaps, however, one should consider what a Japanese businessman told me years ago. 

His favorite teacher provided him with some advice he never forgot. The instructor advised him to choose what he loved second best as his vocation.

Why? If his career required him to perform what he had engaged in as a matter of pleasure, the demand of the job might transform his joyful enthusiasm into a burden.

The famous writer Oscar Wilde suggested this modest alternative:

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

A last question. Despite some of what has been said above, should we assume that high ambition, to the exclusion of much else, is still the preferred way to find happiness?

The late Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman thought well-being had to do with something different.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.”

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The first image from Wikiart.org is called Juvenile Ambition, 1825, by Thomas Sully. Below that is The Ladder of Ambition (Napoleon), a colored etching from 1803 sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Next comes a photo of the first edition of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Finally, a portion of a draft of President Franklin Roosevelt’s January 6, 1941 Four Freedoms Speech. The President dictated the longhand version to Samuel I. Rosenman, who wrote it down. It was sourced from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.