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Success Quote by Elvis Presley

"Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine"

About this Quote

Ambition, in Elvis's hands, isn't a noble staircase toward self-actualization; it's a souped-up vehicle idling at the curb, daring you to floor it. The V8 is doing a lot of cultural work here. It's speed, noise, chrome, and appetite - the postwar American promise made mechanical. By welding "dream" to an engine, Presley collapses the distance between yearning and motion: desire is only real once it has horsepower, once it can be heard and felt.

The line also smuggles in a warning. A V8 doesn't just get you somewhere faster; it burns fuel greedily and invites reckless confidence. Ambition becomes less a private virtue than a public performance, the kind that turns heads, rattles windows, and makes subtlety impossible. That's Elvis in a sentence: the shy Southern kid and the seismic icon, intimacy strapped to spectacle.

Context matters. Presley rose in the era when mass media could turn a person into a product overnight, when mobility (cars, highways, touring circuits) and consumer glamour were reshaping identity. His career was ambition with literal engines: limos, tour buses, Las Vegas marquees, a life lived at high RPM. The metaphor reads like a backstage truth from someone who understood that success isn't just wanting - it's acceleration, infrastructure, and the willingness to be loud enough to be unavoidable.

It's also the kind of homespun poetry a pop figure nails: plainspoken, slightly goofy, instantly visual - and sharper than it first appears.

Quote Details

TopicMotivational
Source
Later attribution: Humorous Wit (Djamel Ouis, 2020) modern compilationISBN: 9781782225829 · ID: c7zXDwAAQBAJ
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine. Elvis Presley Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping. Jonathan Swift If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the ...
Other candidates (1)
Elvis Said Ambition Is a Dream with a V8 Engine (From First to Last, 2010) primary60.0%
Song: "Elvis Said Ambition Is a Dream with a V8 Engine" by From First to Last
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Presley, Elvis. (2026, February 8). Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ambition-is-a-dream-with-a-v8-engine-31005/

Chicago Style
Presley, Elvis. "Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine." FixQuotes. February 8, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ambition-is-a-dream-with-a-v8-engine-31005/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine." FixQuotes, 8 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ambition-is-a-dream-with-a-v8-engine-31005/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Ambition Is a Dream with a V8 Engine - Elvis Presley
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About the Author

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley (January 8, 1935 - August 16, 1977) was a Musician from USA.

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