Tom Steyer

As a businessman, Trump preyed on the hopes and anxieties of struggling middle-class families. He cheated and scammed employees and customers alike. He left behind a trail of bankrupted companies. Past is prologue, and Trump has continued to pursue his own aggrandizement ruthlessly and relentlessly as a candidate and as president-elect.

American Businessman

Charles C. Mann

Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.

American Journalist

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

We really can't tell the difference between people who might seek power for some greater good and people who seek power just to aggrandize themselves. For example, all revolutionaries say that they want to uplift the downtrodden.

American Educator

B. F. Skinner

Religions work for their own aggrandizement - strengthen the church and so on - and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.

American Psychologist

Anthony Scaramucci

Wall Street has been beset with problems. The cycle of greed and personal aggrandizement and lifestyle grandstanding is an affront to any American.

Peter Conrad

The historian's job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to portent.

Often used negatively to describe someone trying to increase their own power or wealth.

Self-Promotion

Commonly used in contexts of political power increases or territorial expansion.

Political Context

Used to discuss growing wealth, often by corporations or countries, not individuals.

Economic Growth

 He became hooked on a sleeping mat, probably because of elevated activity of dopamine in his brain, just like with you and me. But anyway, not only does this person take on special meaning, you focus your attention on them. You aggrandize them. But you have intense energy.

Why we love, why we...

 versus the way countries view the world. Cities are interested in trade and connectivity whereas, we think of countries being interested in territorial aggrandizement. And so, the more we move into a world in which that mentality of inter-urban connectivity

Aggrandizement