Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Persistence is an action. Perseverance is a matter of will. One is energy. The other, endurance.”

— Ryan Holiday

53. “There’s a great expression: Whatever you’re not changing, you’re choosing. Later, you’re going to wish you did something. Whether it’s leaving an abusive relationship or starting a company, don’t fight it – decide it. Now.”

— Ryan Holiday

54. “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

55. “Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.”

— Ryan Holiday

56. “You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that – your impulses – reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.”

— Ryan Holiday

57. “Duris dura franguntur.”

— Ryan Holiday

58. “Do your work. Do it well. Then “let go and let God.“ That’s all there needs to be.”

— Ryan Holiday

59. “No one said life was easy. No one said it would be fair.”

— Ryan Holiday

60. “Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder.”

— Ryan Holiday

61. “The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives – and the less free we are.”

— Ryan Holiday

62. “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. – HERBERT SIMON.”

— Ryan Holiday

63. “Vires acquirit eundo.”

— Ryan Holiday

64. “What’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

— Ryan Holiday

65. “If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I? – HILLEL.”

— Ryan Holiday

66. “People who don’t read have no advantage over those who cannot read.”

— Ryan Holiday

67. “The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.”

— Ryan Holiday

68. “If you’re not still learning, you’re already dying.” Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 104.”

— Ryan Holiday

69. “Solo cuando estamos libres del ego y su influencia podemos alcanzar realmente nuestro mayor potencial.”

— Ryan Holiday

70. “Our duty is to do the right thing – right now.”

— Ryan Holiday

71. “Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” as Shakespeare put it.”

— Ryan Holiday

72. “You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better.”

— Ryan Holiday

73. “For Hercules, the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice.”

— Ryan Holiday

74. “To whatever we face, our job is to respond with: hard work honesty helping others as best we can.”

— Ryan Holiday

75. “Stillness, then, is actually a way to superior performance. Looseness will give you more control than gripping tightly – to a method or a specific outcome.”

— Ryan Holiday

76. “Every event has two handles – one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other – that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.” – EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 43.”

— Ryan Holiday

77. “Humble in our aspirations Gracious in our success Resilient in our failures.”

— Ryan Holiday

78. “To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

— Ryan Holiday

79. “Casi siempre el camino a la victoria pasa por un lugar llamado ‘fracaso’”.”

— Ryan Holiday

80. “As Goethe once observed, the great failing is “to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.”

— Ryan Holiday

81. “As Diogenes, the famous Cynic, once said, “It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” To want nothing makes one invincible – because nothing lies outside your control.”

— Ryan Holiday

82. “As the Quaker William Penn observed, “Buildings that lie so exposed to the weather need a good foundation.”

— Ryan Holiday

83. “The Japanese have a concept, shinrin yoku – forest bathing – which is a form of therapy that uses nature as a treatment for mental and spiritual issues.”

— Ryan Holiday

84. “When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.13.1.”

— Ryan Holiday

85. “See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must.”

— Ryan Holiday

86. “The need for progress can be the enemy of enjoying the process.”

— Ryan Holiday

87. “If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.”

— Ryan Holiday

88. “To quote Fight Club again, “We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.”

— Ryan Holiday

89. “Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.”

— Ryan Holiday

90. “This is what the ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn’t.”

— Ryan Holiday

91. “Stoicism teaches that we can’t control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our “reasoned choice” – our ability to use our reason to choose how we categorize, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events.”

— Ryan Holiday

92. “Accept only what is true. 2. Work for the common good. 3. Match our needs and wants with what is in our control. 4. Embrace what nature has in store for us.”

— Ryan Holiday

93. “It’s important to connect the so-called temptation with its actual effects. Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal. In this way, self-control becomes the real pleasure, and the temptation becomes the regret.”

— Ryan Holiday

94. “Self-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate the self. It’s the ability to question our own instincts, patterns, and assumptions.”

— Ryan Holiday

95. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call.”

— Ryan Holiday

96. “When you realize there is nothing lacking,” Lao Tzu says, “the whole world belongs to you.”

— Ryan Holiday

97. “It’s a temptation that exists for everyone – for talk and hype to replace action.”

— Ryan Holiday

98. “According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go.”

— Ryan Holiday

99. “The way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things.”

— Ryan Holiday

100. “Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control.”

— Ryan Holiday