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All people are pretty much alike, except in so far as ambition may change a man from a normal person into a machine or a monster.

— Fred Hoyle Encounter with the Future (1965)

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Ambition

More quotes by Fred Hoyle

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.

The Black Cloud (1957)

It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.

The Black Cloud (1957)

The two men were mentally too dissimilar for more than a half hour of conversation between them to be possible.

The Black Cloud (1957)

All people are the same, pretty well irrespective of color, creed, or the way they happen to grunt out their language.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him.

Jean de La Bruyère Les Caractères (1688)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Fred Hoyle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.