Quote of the day by Edgar Degas: “You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do today. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time”

Ambition often lives in future plans, delaying necessary present actions. Edgar Degas stressed aiming high in today’s tasks, not tomorrow’s dreams. Passive ambition pictures future success, while active ambition involves daily effort. Working without a real target is merely a waste of time. Modern culture encourages long-term goals, excusing present inaction.

We’ve all done it. Made a plan for “someday,” promised ourselves we’ll start the diet on Monday, the business next quarter, the book once things “settle down.”Somewhere along the way, we’ve confused having big dreams with actually chasing them. It feels productive to imagine a better future, but imagining isn’t the same as building.There’s a silent trap in ambition when it lives only in the future tense, because the future never actually arrives; it just keeps sliding one day further away.Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist painter born in Paris in 1834, best known for his paintings and sculptures of dancers and racehorses, weighed in on this thought years ago, and it still remains relevant today.

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Painting by Edgar Degas (photo: Canva)

Quote of the day

What does the quote mean?

Edgar separates two kinds of ambition. One is passive, the version where you picture a future self who has already achieved the goal.The other is active, the version where ambition gets included as a specific, doable task today. Degas is saying the first kind is empty without the second.Aiming high isn’t about the size of the dream; it’s about how high you set the bar for your actions right now, in this hour, on this ordinary day, in the present.The line “otherwise working is just a waste of time” is the main part of the quote. It suggests that effort without a real target, just busywork, going through the motions isn’t actually progress. You can spend all day “working” and still not be aiming at anything meaningful.

Why is it still important today?

In a world full of five-year plans, vision boards, Degas’s words feel like a correction. Modern productivity culture often glamorises long-term goals while quietly excusing short-term inaction. It’s easy to say you’ll grow a business, learn a skill, or get healthy “eventually.” It’s much harder to ask what that goal demands of me specifically today?