Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”

— Ryan Holiday

Featured in: Empowering Quotes, Opportunity Quotes, Obstacles Quotes, Resilience Quotes, Challenges Quotes

2. “There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”

— Ryan Holiday

3. “Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.”

— Ryan Holiday

4. “It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life – that’s persistence.”

— Ryan Holiday

Featured in: Perseverance Quotes, Persistence Quotes, Never Give Up Quotes, Willpower Quotes, Obstacles Quotes

5. “Failure shows us the way – by showing us what isn’t the way.”

— Ryan Holiday

Featured in: Failure Quotes

6. “The Germans have a word for it: Sitzfleisch. Staying power. Winning by sticking your ass to the seat and not leaving until after it’s over.”

— Ryan Holiday

7. “Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.”

— Ryan Holiday

8. “True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.”

— Ryan Holiday

9. “To do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We’ve got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens.”

— Ryan Holiday

10. “Problems are rarely as bad as we think-or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.”

— Ryan Holiday

11. “We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist.”

— Ryan Holiday

12. “When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?”

— Ryan Holiday

13. “Ordinary people shy away form negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune – really anything, everything – to their advantage.”

— Ryan Holiday

14. “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength.”

— Ryan Holiday

15. “Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation – without the pestilence of panic or fear.”

— Ryan Holiday

16. “Persist and resist”. Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. – Epictetus.”

— Ryan Holiday

17. “Am I saying this because I want to prove how smart I am or am I saying this because it needs to be said?”

— Ryan Holiday

18. “You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.”

— Ryan Holiday

19. “Dollar for dollar there is no better investment in the world than a book.”

— Ryan Holiday

20. “Build a life you don’t need to escape from.”

— Ryan Holiday

21. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough”?”

— Ryan Holiday

22. “An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before.”

— Ryan Holiday

23. “Today, let’s focus just on what’s in front of us.”

— Ryan Holiday

24. “Great times are great softeners.”

— Ryan Holiday

25. “Success becomes a matter of momentum. Once you get a little, it’s easier to keep it going.”

— Ryan Holiday

26. “I run 5 miles every night. It’s where I go to digest my day, hash out the multitude of information that’s been poured into me in the last wild six months or so, and to try and condense it down to some sort of cohesive strategy to live my life by.”

— Ryan Holiday

27. “In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.”

— Ryan Holiday

28. “First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.”

— Ryan Holiday

29. “The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.”

— Ryan Holiday

30. “The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.”

— Ryan Holiday

31. “What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him. – GOETHE.”

— Ryan Holiday

32. “There’s a great expression: Whatever you’re not changing, you’re choosing.”

— Ryan Holiday

33. “In a world of distraction, focusing is a superpower.”

— Ryan Holiday

34. “Stillness is the key to, well, just about everything.”

— Ryan Holiday

35. “What is known can’t jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit.”

— Ryan Holiday

36. “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters – don’t wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.” – EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 13a.”

— Ryan Holiday

37. “It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. – MARCUS AURELIUS.”

— Ryan Holiday

38. “Ego is more than just off-putting and obnoxious. Instead, it’s the sworn enemy of our ability to learn and grow.”

— Ryan Holiday

39. “Conning the conmen is one of life’s most satisfying pleasures.”

— Ryan Holiday

40. “Our first idea is a grand opening, a big launch, a press release, or major media coverage. We default to thinking we need an advertising budget. Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project.”

— Ryan Holiday

41. “Think progress, not perfection.”

— Ryan Holiday

42. “Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today.”

— Ryan Holiday

43. “Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.”

— Ryan Holiday

44. “What I’ve learned most clearly from blogs is that the majority of them write about the problems from the outside for a reason – because they are missing the abilities that allow people to move to the inside.”

— Ryan Holiday

45. “No one will argue that writing is an easy profession. Getting someone to pay you for your words isn’t easy. But there are strategies you can use to simplify the process and transform what you can produce.”

— Ryan Holiday

46. “Happy is the man who can make others better,” Seneca writes, “not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts.”

— Ryan Holiday

47. “Every negative has a positive. Push a negative hard enough and deep enough that it will break through into its counterside.”

— Ryan Holiday

48. “I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent – no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.” – SENECA, ON PROVIDENCE, 4.3.”

— Ryan Holiday

49. “Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.”

— Ryan Holiday

50. “Doing great work is a struggle. It’s draining, it’s demoralizing, it’s frightening. We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty. The greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void, facing it instead of scrambling to make it go away. The question is, when faced with your particular challenge, do you seek the respite of talk or do you face the struggle head-on?”

— Ryan Holiday