"Everybody is ambitious. The question is whether he is ambitious to be or ambitious to do"
About this Quote
Ambition, Monnet suggests, is not the differentiator; it is the raw material. The real divide is ethical and practical: ambition as identity (to be) versus ambition as output (to do). The first is status-hungry and self-referential, oriented toward titles, proximity to power, and the comforting fiction that recognition equals contribution. The second is procedural and often unglamorous, measured in solved problems, built institutions, and agreements that hold when nobody is watching.
Coming from Monnet, this isn’t a fortune-cookie contrast. It’s a bureaucrat’s moral argument, sharpened by the lived reality of postwar Europe, where the stakes of political vanity were no longer abstract. Monnet was less a tribune than an engineer of compromise: the kind of political actor who believed history is moved by committees, supply chains, and patiently negotiated frameworks. In that world, “to be” is dangerous because it invites theater; it turns politics into a mirror. “To do” is safer, not because it’s apolitical, but because it binds ego to outcomes and makes power accountable to reality.
The subtext is also a quiet rebuke to charismatic leadership. Monnet implies that ambition can’t be eliminated, so the task is to domesticate it: channel it away from personal mythmaking and into durable structures. That’s a very European lesson after 1945, and a very modern one now, in an era where personal branding can masquerade as public service. Monnet’s line works because it flatters nobody. It forces the listener to ask: if the applause stopped, would anything still get done?
Coming from Monnet, this isn’t a fortune-cookie contrast. It’s a bureaucrat’s moral argument, sharpened by the lived reality of postwar Europe, where the stakes of political vanity were no longer abstract. Monnet was less a tribune than an engineer of compromise: the kind of political actor who believed history is moved by committees, supply chains, and patiently negotiated frameworks. In that world, “to be” is dangerous because it invites theater; it turns politics into a mirror. “To do” is safer, not because it’s apolitical, but because it binds ego to outcomes and makes power accountable to reality.
The subtext is also a quiet rebuke to charismatic leadership. Monnet implies that ambition can’t be eliminated, so the task is to domesticate it: channel it away from personal mythmaking and into durable structures. That’s a very European lesson after 1945, and a very modern one now, in an era where personal branding can masquerade as public service. Monnet’s line works because it flatters nobody. It forces the listener to ask: if the applause stopped, would anything still get done?
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Quote attributed to Jean Monnet — listed on Wikiquote (Jean Monnet) as "Everybody is ambitious. The question is whether he is ambitious to be or ambitious to do." |
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