Glengarry Glen Ross Ambition Quotes

It's always nice when a character just comes out and states their desire. This ambition—the ambition to get back on the board—motivates Levene throughout the play. It's what drives him, and it's what brings him down in the end.

You think when Moss looks in the mirror he sees a cowboy staring back at him? There's something about this guy that says he fancies himself a modern day gunslinger. His ambition is to be out there on his own, though he's not particularly willing to work for it or put his own neck on the line. In order to follow his ambition, he manipulates others.

Once you get past Moss's desire to go work for himself, you get a glimpse at another ambition of his: revenge. Of all of the characters, he's the one who wants to do something to get back at the people he believes have ruled over him for too long.

There's no question that Moss is an ambitious man, however this is just further proof that he's not willing to work to reach his ultimate goals—or he's come to believe that hard work doesn't get you what you want. Moss looks for the easy fix. "One night's work" is how he wants to play it.

Hey—you can't fault a guy for being honest. Greed and ambition drive Roma. Does that make him a good person? Not so much. Is it what makes him the office hotshot? Probably.

Selling property is a hard slog. Selling dreams and ambition—well, that's something else entirely, and that's what these guys specialize in. Like Roma, Levene's pitch doesn't focus on the property, but instead focuses on what people want in life. Levene appeals to their dreams, and lays his pitch out in a way that makes a potential buyer imagine that real estate can change everything about their lives. Is this deceitful? Maybe. Does it work? Well, it did in the past anyway.

The robbery and the sale reinvigorate Levene, and the sad sack from Act 1 is gone. Ambition returns, and "The Machine" just wants to keep on moving forward. The truth about the robbery stops him, though.

This little quote links ambition back to another big theme of the play—respect. Levene wants to get out and keep selling, but he also wants the respect of being given the best leads.

Oh, Roma—you tricky little so-and-so. On the surface, this looks like a nice moment between two guys who share a mutual respect for the business and each other. But this is just pure ambition talking, and we're about to discover what Roma's really after in just a second.

Roma talking about how he wants to work with Levene is just a ploy to get in on half of Levene's sales. That's pretty cold blooded, right? All that stuff that Roma said about wanting to work with Levene had nothing to do with respect or the good old days or anything like that, and instead Roma just saw a way to make more money for himself at the expense of Shelly "the Machine" Levene.