Sam Altman on Ambition Quotes

"Don't let your internal narrative limit what you think you can accomplish."

"You want to be an exponential curve yourself."

"It is much easier to do a hard thing than an easy thing. People want to be part of something that matters."

"You want to be moving toward a future that you are personally excited to live in."

"If you are going to fail, fail pursuing a dream that was worth the effort."

"It’s better to be a small part of a great thing than a big part of a mediocre thing."

"If you can't focus for a few hours at a time, you're going to have a hard time building anything significant."

"A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time."

"It is useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever."

"It is much easier to get people to help you with a big, important dream than a small, incremental one."

"You want to be 'difficult to dismiss.' This comes from having a dream that is so compelling and a plan so clear that people have to take you seriously."

"Always be looking for the next level of your goal. Never settle for 'good enough'."

"If you are working on a problem that doesn't matter, it's very hard to get the best people to work with you."

"It is much easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup because people want to help with hard problems."

"If you find yourself in a room where everyone agrees with your dream, you might not be dreaming big enough."

"You have to be willing to be misunderstood for a long time if you want to do something new."

"Surround yourself with people who have even higher ambitions than you do."

"If you are not working on the most important problem in your field, why not?"

"Don't wait for someone else to give you permission to be great."

"Ambition is a magnet. When you dream big, you attract the most talented people in the world to help you."

"Most people are limited by their own self-belief and their own ambition. Do everything you can to expand these."

"The future belongs to those who have the vision to see it and the courage to build it."

"It is easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters."

"The scale of your dream determines the scale of your impact. Don't settle for a small vision."

"You get what you ask for. If you don't ask, you don't get."

"If you are not failing occasionally, your goals are probably not ambitious enough."

"If you don't take risks, you'll never do anything great."

"The world wants to pull you toward superficiality; you have to fight for depth."

"You have to be a little bit delusional about your creative vision to make it real."

"It’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something that matters and feel that their work will be significant."

"The world is much more malleable than most people think, but you have to have the confidence to push on it."

"The best goals are the ones that seem slightly impossible but are actually achievable with extreme effort."

"You should aim to be the best in the world at what you do."