Life & Wisdom Quote by William Feather

Ambition is supposed to be the engine, not the steering wheel, and Feather’s warning lands because it treats overreach as a practical failure, not a moral one. The line doesn’t condemn wanting more; it condemns wanting more so loudly that you stop hearing the actual work. That’s a distinctly American, early-20th-century anxiety: the hustle ideal curdling into a kind of managerial daydream where progress is measured in plans, titles, and “next steps” instead of competence.

The phrasing is deceptively plain. “Get so far ahead” frames ambition as a runner breaking from the pack, sprinting into empty track. It’s kinetic, almost cinematic: you can see the gap widening. Then “loses sight” shifts from speed to perception, implying that the real danger isn’t fatigue but delusion. Ambition becomes a vision problem. You’re not failing because you lack effort; you’re failing because you’re looking past what will actually move you forward.

“Job at hand” is the sharpest choice here. Not “purpose,” not “dream,” not “calling.” Job. Hand. It’s blue-collar diction applied to white-collar temptation, a reminder that outcomes are built from near, boring tasks. Feather’s subtext is anti-performativity: don’t confuse announcing the future with earning it. In an era that increasingly rewarded branding, ladder-climbing, and “executive” thinking, the quote argues for a quiet heresy: mastery is local, immediate, unglamorous. Ambition that can’t stoop to the present isn’t visionary; it’s absentee.