Ambition used to be a virtue. Somewhere along the way, it became a vice.
Once a cornerstone of the American ethos—synonymous with self-reliance, upward mobility, and personal agency—ambition is now more often associated with selfishness, power-hunger, or hollow striving. We’re suspicious of those who want too much, push too hard, or dream too big.
But what if we’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater? What if ambition isn’t the enemy of virtue, but its engine?
Ambition ≠ Arrogance
Let’s be clear: This isn’t a defense of blind ambition, greed, or cutthroat competition. Those caricatures have clouded our view. What I’m talking about is something quieter and more enduring: self-authorizing behavior—the drive to make something of oneself without waiting for permission.
It’s the kind of ambition Walt Whitman celebrated in his poem “I Hear America Singing”—a song of carpenters, mechanics, mothers, and boatmen, each performing their tasks with pride, each contributing their voice to a shared harmony. It’s not political. It’s not materialistic. It’s simply this: I am willing to act on my own behalf to make my life better—and maybe, the world too.
We need to reclaim that ambition.
Self-Reliance Begins With a Spark
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of ambition’s greatest advocates, called for bold thinking in his essay Self-Reliance. His message? Stop waiting for external validation. Trust your instincts. Cultivate your unique gifts. Live from the inside out.
At its heart, Emerson’s self-reliance is a call to be ambitious—not in the sense of chasing status, but in daring to live a life of one’s own making. He urged readers to trust their intuition, reject passive conformity, and take full responsibility for their own paths. Emerson believed in challenging inherited beliefs and traditions, arguing that consistency for its own sake was a trap. He encouraged flexibility, growth, and adaptability—values that are only possible when ambition is present to power them.
Ambition, rightly understood, is what drives these behaviors. It’s the willingness to move forward, even when the destination isn’t guaranteed.
The Psychology of Productive Ambition
Psychological research supports the idea that ambition—when grounded in purpose—can be a powerful predictor of well-being and success.
In a longitudinal study of over 1,500 individuals, psychologist Timothy Judge found that ambition was associated with higher levels of education, income, and occupational status across the lifespan (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). More importantly, when aligned with intrinsic motivation, ambition also correlated with life satisfaction.
This distinction matters. The best kind of ambition is self-determined, not externally driven. According to Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (2000), people flourish when their goals are internally motivated—when they reflect personal values, autonomy, and purpose. In short, ambition that grows from within—not from competition or comparison—creates not just achievement, but meaning.
So ambition doesn’t have to be about stepping over others—it can be about stepping into one’s potential.
Ambition, Adaptability, and the American Mind
Ambition isn’t just about what we want. It’s about how we learn and grow. That’s where American Pragmatism—the homegrown philosophy of thinkers like William James and John Dewey—adds depth.
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Pragmatists believed that learning and truth came not from rigid doctrine but from experience and experimentation. They embraced experimentalism—learning through trial and error. They valued instrumentalism—the idea that thoughts and tools exist to solve problems, not to be worshiped. And they practiced fallibilism—a humility that accepts all knowledge as provisional and evolving.
Sound familiar? These are the habits of the ambitious mind: try, reflect, adjust, and keep moving. Ambition doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means being willing to find them. It means being open to failure, to feedback, to reinvention. Ambition is the fuel for the iterative process of self-making.
And yet, our culture has become wary of it.
Why We Distrust Ambition Now
In a time of vast inequality and public distrust of elites, ambition can feel suspect. We associate it with exploitation, privilege, or disconnection from community values. But that’s not ambition, it’s distortion.
We’ve also grown uneasy with individual striving in a world that rightly demands attention to systems, equity, and shared responsibility. But here’s the paradox: Without ambition, even the best-designed systems stall.
You can have a free society, access to education, and tools for advancement—but someone still has to want to move forward. Ambition is what converts opportunity into agency.
Reframing Ambition in Daily Life
So what does rehabilitated ambition look like in practice?
It begins with intentional living—setting goals not just to impress others, but to stretch yourself. This means asking deeper questions: What do I want to grow toward? What kind of person am I becoming through this pursuit?
It continues with craftsmanship, which is about more than career ambition. It’s taking pride in doing things well—whether it’s managing a team, writing a memo, or preparing dinner. Ambition doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it whispers through attention to detail and care in execution.
Ambition also shows up in ownership. If something in your life isn’t working—your schedule, your relationships, your job—ambition doesn’t complain. It moves. Not recklessly. Not reactively. But with resolve.
And perhaps most importantly, ambition can be a form of humble aspiration. It doesn’t mean shouting your goals from the rooftops. It means quietly pursuing them with consistency, learning from setbacks, and evolving your vision. It’s the discipline of growth, grounded in purpose.
The Virtue of Moving Forward
When we rehabilitate ambition, we stop seeing it as a selfish impulse and start seeing it for what it really is: a willingness to participate in our own becoming.
It’s the spark that animates Whitman’s singing workers. It’s the drive behind Emerson’s call to self-reliance. It’s the mechanism of growth in pragmatic experimentation. It’s what helps us get unstuck, adapt to change, and design better lives—not just for ourselves, but for others too.
So, in the midst of all the noise, take a moment and listen carefully.
You might still hear America singing. And if you listen closer, you’ll hear the ambition behind the song.
