Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “According to the Stoics, the circle of control contains just one thing: YOUR MIND. That’s right, even your physical body isn’t completely within the circle.”

— Ryan Holiday

102. “Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you. Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one.”

— Ryan Holiday

103. “If the breaking day sees someone proud, The ending day sees them brought low. No one should put too much trust in triumph, No one should give up hope of trials improving. Clotho mixes one with the other and stops Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around. No one has had so much divine favor That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow. God keeps our lives hurtling on, Spinning in a whirlwind.” – SENECA, THYESTES, 613.”

— Ryan Holiday

104. “A wise man can make use of whatever comes his way, he said, but is in want of nothing. “On the other hand,” he said, “nothing is needed by the fool for he does not understand how to use anything but he is in want of everything.” There is no better definition of a Stoic: to have but not want, to enjoy without needing.”

— Ryan Holiday

105. “There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.”

— Ryan Holiday

106. “Ignore what other people are doing. Ignore what’s going on around you. There is no competition. There is no objective benchmark to hit. There is simply the best that you can do – that’s all that matters.”

— Ryan Holiday

107. “Doing new things invariably means obstacles. A new path is, by definition, uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we cut away debris and remove impediments. Only in struggling with the impediments that made others quit can we find ourselves on untrodden territory – only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too impatient to be taught.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

109. “Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”

— Ryan Holiday

110. “Confucius wrote that the “gentleman is self-possessed and relaxed, while the petty man is perpetually full of worry.”

— Ryan Holiday

111. “We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything.” Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 99.”

— Ryan Holiday

112. “The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.”

— Ryan Holiday

113. “The perceiving eye is weak, he wrote; the observing eye is strong. Musashi understood that the observing eye sees simply what is there. The perceiving eye sees more than what is there. The observing eye sees events, clear of distractions, exaggerations, and misperceptions. The perceiving eye sees “insurmountable obstacles” or “major setbacks” or even just “issues.” It brings its own issues to the fight.”

— Ryan Holiday

114. “That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.9.13–14.”

— Ryan Holiday

115. “The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you “push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.”

— Ryan Holiday

116. “Just because the conditions aren’t exactly to your liking, or you don’t feel ready yet, doesn’t mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.”

— Ryan Holiday

117. “Our duty is rarely easy, but it is important. It’s also usually the harder choice. But we must do it.”

— Ryan Holiday

118. “Everything is change. Embrace that. Flow with it.”

— Ryan Holiday

119. “We don’t need pity – our own or anyone else’s – we need purpose, poise, and patience.”

— Ryan Holiday

120. “On the path to successful action, we will fail – possibly many times. And that’s okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting – because they’ve taken failure the wrong way.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

122. “Free and cheap helps.” So does making the entire process as easy and seamless as possible. The more you reduce the cost of consumption, the more people will be likely to try your product. Which means price, distribution, and other variables are not only essential business decisions, they are essential marketing decisions.”

— Ryan Holiday

123. “You may be sure that you are at peace with yourself,” Seneca wrote, “when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be flattery or a threat, or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with unmeaning sin.”

— Ryan Holiday

124. “It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows,” Epictetus says. You can’t learn if you think you already know.”

— Ryan Holiday

125. “If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.”

— Ryan Holiday

126. “Every man has a passion gnawing away at the bottom of his heart, just as every fruit has its worm. – ALEXANDRE DUMAS.”

— Ryan Holiday

127. “Remember: you’re a free agent. When someone points out a legitimate flaw in your belief or in your actions, they’re not criticizing you. They’re presenting a better alternative. Accept it!”

— Ryan Holiday

128. “Perfectionism rarely begets perfection – only disappointment.”

— Ryan Holiday

129. “We will be and do many things in our lives. Some are prestigious, some are onerous, none are beneath us. To whatever we face, our job is to respond with: hard work honesty helping others as best we can You should never have to ask yourself, But what am I supposed to do now? Because you know the answer: your job.”

— Ryan Holiday

130. “As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

— Ryan Holiday

131. “External things can’t fix internal issues.”

— Ryan Holiday

132. “The Blitzkrieg strategy was designed to exploit the flinch of the enemy – he must collapse at the sight of what appears to be overwhelming force. Its success depends completely on this response. This military strategy works because the set-upon troops see the offensive force as an enormous obstacle bearing down on them. This.”

— Ryan Holiday

133. “Don’t feed insecurity. Don’t feed delusions of grandeur. Both are obstacles to stillness. Be confident. You’ve earned it.”

— Ryan Holiday

134. “He was patient because he knew that difficult things took time.”

— Ryan Holiday

135. “The obstacle is not only turned upside down but used as a catapult.”

— Ryan Holiday

136. “So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually instead of acting with conscientious deliberation. So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place. We’re reacting to shadows. We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test. We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look.”

— Ryan Holiday

137. “You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.”

— Ryan Holiday

138. “There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with. – SENECA.”

— Ryan Holiday

139. “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

140. “Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.”

— Ryan Holiday

141. “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. – COLIN POWELL.”

— Ryan Holiday

142. “Great men have almost always shown themselves as ready to obey as they afterwards proved able to command. – LORD MAHON.”

— Ryan Holiday

143. “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. – VIKTOR FRANKL.”

— Ryan Holiday

144. “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

145. “Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success.”

— Ryan Holiday

146. “If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled – have you no shame in that?” – EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 28.”

— Ryan Holiday

147. “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

148. “The only real failure is abandoning your principles.”

— Ryan Holiday

149. “Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.”

— Ryan Holiday

150. “I have the power within me to keep that out. I can see the truth.”

— Ryan Holiday