ambition vs mania

ambition

noun
  • An object of an ardent desire. 

  • Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people. 

  • A personal quality similar to motivation, not necessarily tied to a single goal. 

  • A desire, as in (sense 1), for another person to achieve these things. 

verb
  • To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet. 

mania

noun
  • Excessive or unreasonable desire; insane passion affecting one or many people; fanaticism. 

  • Dotcom mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. 

  • The state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/or energy levels. 

  • Violent derangement of mind; madness; insanity. 

  • 2013-07-20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845 

How often have the words ambition and mania occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )