Scientists should be on tap, but not on top.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
Quoted in Randolph S Churchill Twenty-OneYears (1965).

I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  On becoming Prime Minister.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'Birches'.

Let us descend now therefore from this top Of speculation.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.12, l.588^9.

   I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop But if baby I'm the bottom, you're the top.

-Porter, Cole
  'You're theTop', from the show Anything Goes.

   You're the top You're the Louvr'Museum You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss.

-Porter, Cole
  'You're theTop', from the show Anything Goes.

Agreement reached by the negotiators†usually starts to collapse in the hands of those who implement it, no matter how carefully cleared at the top.

-Shultz, George P(ratt)
  On negotiating the release of Russian political prisoners. Turmoil andTriumph.

There is always room at the top.

-Webster, Daniel
On being advised against joining the overcrowded legal profession, attributed.

I started at the top and worked down.

-Welles, (George) Orson
Attributed.

What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He lookedö Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him:öFar and wide the clouds were touched, And in their silent faces he could read Unutterable love.

-Wordsworth,William
  'The Excursion', bk.1, l.198^205.

You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder. When you set your aim too high and don't fulfil it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness. Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it. That's the only way to get to the top.

-Zatopek, Emil
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).