items of interest

with contributions from Joseph Epstein, Oprah Winfrey, Jim Wallis

Admirable ambition

"Ambition is almost never entirely detached from egotism, but it can also be grand or petty in scope, high or low in the degree of its selflessness," writes author Joseph Epstein. "For ambition to be admirable, it has, I think, to be greater than about oneself alone. When it isn't, it goes flat and its possessor seems comically self-absorbed at best, a social menace at worst....

"Ambition of the right kind has to be greater than the mere self...."

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