Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
There are two kinds of success. One is the rare kind that comes to the person who has the power to do what no one else has the power to do. That is genius. But the average person who wins what we call success is not a genius. That person is a man or woman who has merely the ordinary qualities that they share with their fellows, but has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.
Every day the word 'gift' is used to define talent, ability, and performance. Being gifted has an even deeper meaning, a meaning that isn't always measured in points per game or win/loss records - it's measured by heart, effort, and desire.
Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.
Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.