Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “If your purpose is something larger than you – to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself – then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult.”

— Ryan Holiday

252. “In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given. And the only way you’ll do something spectacular is by using it all to your advantage.”

— Ryan Holiday

253. “Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

255. “Ernest Hemingway opens his book The Sun Also Rises with a Bible verse: “One generation passeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose.”

— Ryan Holiday

256. “Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished.”

— Ryan Holiday

257. “Ego needs honors in order to be validated. Confidence, on the other hand, is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition.”

— Ryan Holiday

258. “Whatever you’re going through, whatever is holding you down or standing in your way, can be turned into a source of strength – by thinking of people other than yourself. You won’t have time to think of your own suffering because there are other people suffering and you’re too focused on them.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

260. “We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.” –.”

— Ryan Holiday

261. “See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom.”

— Ryan Holiday

262. “Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story.”

— Ryan Holiday

263. “Who wants to be the person who can never let go? Is there so little meaning in your life that your only pursuit is work until you’re eventually carted off in a coffin? Take pride in your work. But it is not all.”

— Ryan Holiday

264. “It is sad to consider how much time many people spend in the course of a day doing things they “have” to do – not necessary obligations like work or family, but the obligations we needlessly accept out of vanity or ignorance. Consider the actions we take in order to impress other people or the lengths we’ll go to fulfill urges or sate desires we don’t even question.”

— Ryan Holiday

265. “Under the comb the tangle and the straight path are the same. – HERACLITUS.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

267. “I cannot understand how some people live without communicating with the wisest people who ever lived on earth.”

— Ryan Holiday

268. “They work quietly in the corner. They turn their inner turmoil into product – and eventually to stillness.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

270. “The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can’t afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don’t need to take our weaknesses for granted.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

272. “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

273. “Apply yourself to thinking through difficulties – hard times can be softened, tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure.”

— Ryan Holiday

274. “With growth hacking, we begin by testing until we can be confident we have a product worth marketing. Only then do we chase the big bang that kick-starts our growth engine.”

— Ryan Holiday

275. “Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair – these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy – those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter – these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

277. “Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.”

— Ryan Holiday

278. “Like any good school, learning from failure isn’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.”

— Ryan Holiday

279. “Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you’re awake. The thing that provoked you wasn’t real – but your reaction was. And so from the fake comes real consequences. Which is why you need to wake up right now instead of creating a nightmare.”

— Ryan Holiday

280. “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

281. “In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion.”

— Ryan Holiday

282. “The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.”

— Ryan Holiday

283. “John D. Rockefeller, who was as rich as they come, believed that “a man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on $10 and has everything he desires, he really is rich.” Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.”

— Ryan Holiday

284. “In failure or adversity, it’s so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible. It’s a distraction too; we don’t do much else when we’re busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us.”

— Ryan Holiday

285. “A good person is invincible, for they don’t rush into contests in which they aren’t the strongest. If you want their property, take it – take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they would avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible?” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.6.5–7.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

287. “Your own experiences have value. You have accumulated your own wisdom too. Stake your claim. Put something down for the ages – in words and also in example.”

— Ryan Holiday

288. “The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we run from actual accountability.”

— Ryan Holiday

289. “The way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things.”

— Ryan Holiday

290. “If something is in our control, its worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things. It is not in our control how long we’ll live or what will come and take us from life. But thinking about mortality creates real perspective, and urgency. It doesn’t need to be depressing. Because its invigorating.”

— Ryan Holiday

291. “Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small.”

— Ryan Holiday

292. “Maintain control over your mind and perceptions, they’d say. It’s your most prized possession.”

— Ryan Holiday

293. “Let’s be honest. Most of the time we don’t find ourselves in horrible situations we must simply endure. Rather, we face some minor disadvantage or get stuck with some less-than-favorable conditions. Or we’re trying to do something really hard and find ourselves outmatched, overstretched, or out.”

— Ryan Holiday

294. “There’s a quote from Bismarck that says, in effect, any fool can learn from experience. The trick is to learn from other people’s experience. This.”

— Ryan Holiday

295. “We can’t blame other people for making us feel stressed or frustrated any more than we can blame them for our jealousy. The cause is within us.”

— Ryan Holiday

296. “Where we decide to put our energy decides what we’ll ultimately accomplish.”

— Ryan Holiday

297. “While everyone else is running around with a list of responsibilities a mile long – things they’re not actually responsible for – you’ve got just that one-item list. You’ve got just one thing to manage: your choices, your will, your mind. So mind it.”

— Ryan Holiday

298. “Epictetus was reminded daily how little control he had, even of his own person. As he came to study and understand Stoicism, he adopted this lesson into what he described as our “chief task in life.” It was, he said, simply “to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”

— Ryan Holiday

299. “Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.”

— Ryan Holiday

300. “She had purpose. She had direction. She wasn’t driven by passion, but by reason.”

— Ryan Holiday