Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Man is pushed by drives, but he is pulled by values – Viktor Frankl.”

— Ryan Holiday

152. “Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep good watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store. Only an ingrate would fail to see that these great architects of venerable thoughts were born for us and have designed a way of life for us.” – SENECA.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

154. “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

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

160. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

163. “It’s far better that we become pragmatic and adaptable – able to do what we need to do anywhere, anytime. The place to do your work, to live the good life, is here.”

— Ryan Holiday

164. “The struggle is great, the task divine – to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility. – EPICTETUS.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don’t stop it. It hasn’t yet come? Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealth – one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods.”

— Ryan Holiday

170. “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

171. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

173. “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

174. “The less you desire, the richer you are, the freer you are, the more powerful you are.”

— Ryan Holiday

175. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

177. “Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work.”

— Ryan Holiday

178. “We must, as Shakespeare said, “meet the time as it seeks us.” Our destiny is here. Let’s seize it.”

— Ryan Holiday

179. “Because when you play all the way to the whistle, there’s no reason to worry about the clock.”

— Ryan Holiday

180. “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

181. “Outward appearances are deceptive. What’s within them, beneath them, is what matters.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

183. “Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.”

— Ryan Holiday

184. “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

185. “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

186. “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

187. “If we do not focus on our internal integration – on self-awareness – we risk external disintegration.”

— Ryan Holiday

188. “Knowledge – self-knowledge in particular – is freedom.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

191. “Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room – until you change that with results.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

194. “We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good?”

— Ryan Holiday

195. “Todo lo que se hace bien es noble, por humilde que sea.”

— Ryan Holiday

196. “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

197. “It’s supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren’t going to work. It’s going to take a lot out of you – but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It’s a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles. There are options. Settle in for the long haul and then try each and every possibility, and you’ll get there.”

— Ryan Holiday

198. “When success begins to slip from your fingers – for whatever reason – the response isn’t to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices.”

— Ryan Holiday

199. “Whether what you’re going through is your fault or your problem doesn’t matter, because it’s yours to deal with right now.”

— Ryan Holiday

200. “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