Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

105. “How you handle even minor adversity might seem like nothing, but, in fact, it reveals everything.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

107. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

109. “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

110. “Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.”

— Ryan Holiday

111. “We’re all just humans, doing the best we can. We’re all just trying to survive, and in the process, inch the world forward a little bit.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

113. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

117. “Stoicism as the ideal “personal operating system.”

— Ryan Holiday

118. “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

119. “It’s the logic of two campers and the bear – you don’t need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other camper.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

121. “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

122. “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

123. “In these situations, talent is not the most sought-after characteristic. Grace and poise are, because these two attributes precede the opportunity to deploy any other skill.”

— Ryan Holiday

124. “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

125. “Respect the craft and make something beautiful.”

— Ryan Holiday

126. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

129. “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

130. “Even one minute without playing the blame game is progress in the art of living.”

— Ryan Holiday

131. “Los mejores no son los que esperaron las oportunidades, sino los que las arrebataron; las asediaron, las conquistaron y las pusieron a su servicio.”

— Ryan Holiday

132. “Behind mountains are more mountains.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

134. “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

135. “Ask yourself the following first thing in the morning: What am I lacking in attaining freedom from passion? What for tranquility? What am I? A mere body, estate-holder, or reputation? None of these things. What, then? A rational being. What then is demanded of me? Meditate on your actions. How did I steer away from serenity? What did I do that was unfriendly, unsocial, or uncaring? What did I fail to do in all these things?” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.6.34–.”

— Ryan Holiday

136. “Meanwhile, love is right there. Egoless, open, positive, vulnerable, peaceful, and productive.”

— Ryan Holiday

137. “Churchill’s old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On.”

— Ryan Holiday

138. “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes – so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil – nothing is so self-blinding.”

— Ryan Holiday

139. “To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.”

— Ryan Holiday

140. “The process is about doing the right things, right now. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture.”

— Ryan Holiday

141. “Each of us must break the link in the chain of what the Buddhists call samsara, the continuation of life’s suffering from generation to generation.”

— Ryan Holiday

142. “Remember you are mortal.”

— Ryan Holiday

143. “Sun Tzu would say that it is best to win without fighting – to have maneuvered in such a way that the enemy has lost before it has even begun.”

— Ryan Holiday

144. “Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short.”

— Ryan Holiday

145. “There’s a saying about how the Irish ship captain located all the rocks in the harbor – using the bottom of his boat. Whatever works, right? Remember.”

— Ryan Holiday

146. “You can’t learn if you think you already know. You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions. You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.”

— Ryan Holiday

147. “And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice! – EURIPIDES.”

— Ryan Holiday

148. “On the surface of the ocean there is stillness,” the monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said of the human condition, “but underneath there are currents.”

— Ryan Holiday

149. “Greek word euthymia, which he defines as “believing in yourself and trusting that you are on the right path, and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths of those wandering in every direction.”

— Ryan Holiday

150. “Remember that today when you try to extend your reach outward – that it’s much better and more appropriately directed inward.”

— Ryan Holiday