Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

103. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

105. “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

106. “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

107. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

111. “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

112. “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

113. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

116. “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

117. “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

118. “You get what you deserve. Instead of being a good person today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.”

— Ryan Holiday

119. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

122. “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

123. “Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

125. “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

126. “If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any growth in it.”

— Ryan Holiday

127. “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

128. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

130. “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

131. “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

132. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

134. “Man is pushed by drives, but he is pulled by values – Viktor Frankl.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

136. “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

137. “If you wish to improve,” Epictetus once said, “be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.”

— Ryan Holiday

138. “Character is a powerful defense in a world that would love to be able to seduce you, buy you, tempt you, and change you. If you know what you believe and why you believe it, you’ll avoid poisonous relationships, toxic jobs, fair-weather friends, and any number of ills that afflict people who haven’t thought through their deepest concerns. That’s your education. That’s why you do this work.”

— Ryan Holiday

139. “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

140. “A true student is like a sponge. Absorbing what goes on around him, filtering it, latching on to what he can hold. A student is self-critical and self-motivated, always trying to improve his understanding so that he can move on to the next topic, the next challenge. A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.”

— Ryan Holiday

141. “This obsession with the past, with something that someone did or how things should have been, as much as it hurts, is ego embodied. Everyone else has moved on, but you can’t, because you can’t see anything but your own way. You can’t conceive of accepting that someone could hurt you, deliberately or otherwise. So you hate.”

— Ryan Holiday

142. “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

143. “And, above all, be willing to learn from anyone and everyone, regardless of their station in life.”

— Ryan Holiday

144. “It’s important for us to remember in our own journey to self-improvement: one never arrives. The sage – the perfect Stoic who behaves perfectly in every situation – is an ideal, not an end.”

— Ryan Holiday

145. “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

146. “Without virtue and training, Aristotle observed, “it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably.”

— Ryan Holiday

147. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

149. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday