Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Duris dura franguntur.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

53. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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

64. “You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES.”

— Ryan Holiday

65. “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

66. “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

67. “As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear, “When you worry, ask yourself, ‘What am I choosing to not see right now?’ What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

73. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

83. “Done enough times, done with sincerity and feeling, routine becomes ritual. The regularity of it – the daily cadence – creates deep and meaningful experience.”

— Ryan Holiday

84. “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

85. “Vires acquirit eundo.”

— Ryan Holiday

86. “Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections.”

— Ryan Holiday

87. “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

88. “That space between your ears – that’s yours. You don’t just have to control what gets in, you also have to control what goes on in there. You have to protect it from yourself, from your own thoughts. Not with sheer force, but rather with a kind of gentle, persistent sweeping. Be the librarian who says “Shhh!” to the rowdy kids, or tells the jerk on his phone to please take it outside. Because the mind is an important and sacred place. Keep it clean and clear.”

— Ryan Holiday

89. “If fear is to be a driving force in your life, fear what you’ll miss. Fear what happens if you don’t act. Fear what they’ll think of you down the road, for having dared so little. Think of what you’re leaving on the table. Think of the terrifying costs of playing small.”

— Ryan Holiday

90. “Adversity can harden you. Or it can loosen you up and make you better – if you let it.”

— Ryan Holiday

91. “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

92. “The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth.”

— Ryan Holiday

93. “Do I need this? Or is it really about ego?”

— Ryan Holiday

94. “Routine, done for long enough and done sincerely enough, becomes more than routine. It becomes ritual – it becomes sanctified and holy.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

96. “We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions. On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person, or a situation, or with life itself.”

— Ryan Holiday

97. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

99. “There’s no time off. There aren’t even weekends. We are always preparing for what life might throw at us – and when it does, we’re ready and don’t stop until we’ve handled it.”

— Ryan Holiday

100. “Don’t let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you,” Marcus Aurelius said. “Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.”

— Ryan Holiday