Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “How you handle even minor adversity might seem like nothing, but, in fact, it reveals everything.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

153. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

155. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

162. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

168. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

170. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

174. “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

175. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

177. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

179. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

183. “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

184. “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

185. “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

186. “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

187. “You don’t control the situation, but you control what you think about it.”

— Ryan Holiday

188. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

190. “Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?”

— Ryan Holiday

191. “Doing the right thing almost always takes courage, just as discipline is impossible without the wisdom to know what is worth choosing. What good is courage if not applied to justice? What good is wisdom if it doesn’t make us more modest?”

— Ryan Holiday

192. “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

193. “History is written with blood, sweat, and tears, and it is etched into eternity by the quiet endurance of courageous people.”

— Ryan Holiday

194. “Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them? We might not be emperors, but the world is still constantly testing us. It asks: Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you’re made of?”

— Ryan Holiday

195. “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

196. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

200. “Facts are better than dreams, as Churchill put it.”

— Ryan Holiday