Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “When it comes to your goals and the things you strive for, ask yourself: Am I in control of them or they in control of me?”

— Ryan Holiday

252. “Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are and what you stand for?”

— Ryan Holiday

253. “The Stoics believed that every person, animal, and thing has a purpose or a place in nature. Everyone had a job-a specific duty. Even people who did bad things-they were doing their job of being evil because evil is a part of life. Do your job today. Whatever happens, whatever other people’s jobs happen to be, do yours. Be good.”

— Ryan Holiday

254. “The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather – no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone like you.”

— Ryan Holiday

255. “La adversidad puede endurecerte. O puede soltarte y mejorarte, si se lo permites.”

— Ryan Holiday

256. “The foundation of a free country is that your freedom to swing your fist ends where someone else’s nose begins. That is, someone else is free to do what they like until it interferes with your physical body and space. This saying can work as a great personal philosophy as well.”

— Ryan Holiday

257. “Knowing what your goal is – having that crystal clear – allows you to know when to follow conventional wisdom and when to say “Screw it.”

— Ryan Holiday

258. “In a sense, ego is the enemy of building, of maintaining, and of recovering.”

— Ryan Holiday

259. “Because obstacles are not only to be expected but embraced. Embraced? Yes, because these obstacles are actually opportunities to test ourselves, to try new things, and, ultimately, to triumph. The Obstacle Is the Way.”

— Ryan Holiday

260. “Focusing on smaller, progressive parts of the work also eliminates the tendency to sit on your ass and dream indefinitely. There.”

— Ryan Holiday

261. “Because like Epicurus says, nothing is unending. You just need to be strong and gracious enough to get through it.”

— Ryan Holiday

262. “We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.”

— Ryan Holiday

263. “If we’re to overcome our obstacles, this is the message to broadcast – internally and externally. We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise. We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile.”

— Ryan Holiday

264. “The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.”

— Ryan Holiday

265. “Seize this moment to deploy the plan that has long sat dormant in your head.”

— Ryan Holiday

266. “The market was inherently unpredictable and often vicious –.”

— Ryan Holiday

267. “Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.”

— Ryan Holiday

268. “Jesus told his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself.”

— Ryan Holiday

269. “This is the skill that must be cultivated – freedom from disturbance and perturbation – so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them.”

— Ryan Holiday

270. “Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure. You will battle the ego in each of them. You will make mistakes in each of them. You must sweep the floor every minute of every day. And then sweep again.”

— Ryan Holiday

271. “Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of – that’s the metric to measure yourself against.”

— Ryan Holiday

272. “The advantages of nonaction. Few in the world attain these. – THE DAODEJING.”

— Ryan Holiday

273. “When student is ready, the teacher appears.”

— Ryan Holiday

274. “Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function.”

— Ryan Holiday

275. “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

276. “The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity. The enemy is any perception that prevents us from seeing this.”

— Ryan Holiday

277. “Silence is the general consecration of the universe. – HERMAN MELVILLE.”

— Ryan Holiday

278. “It means you’re the least important person in the room – until you change that with results.”

— Ryan Holiday

279. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” Nietzsche said.”

— Ryan Holiday

280. “The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other. Let.”

— Ryan Holiday

281. “Epictetus is saying that one becomes a philosopher when they begin to exercise their guiding reason and start to question the emotions and beliefs and even language that others take for granted.”

— Ryan Holiday

282. “Both egotistical and insecure people make their flaws central to their identity – either by covering them up or by brooding over them or externalizing them.”

— Ryan Holiday

283. “We must prepare for pride and kill it early – or it will kill what we aspire to. We must be on guard against that wild self-confidence and self-obsession.”

— Ryan Holiday

284. “Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep.”

— Ryan Holiday

285. “True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility;.”

— Ryan Holiday

286. “When I look up in the universe, I know I’m small, but I’m also big. I’m big because I’m connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.” We just can’t forget which is bigger and which has been here longer.”

— Ryan Holiday

287. “Remember you are mortal.”

— Ryan Holiday

288. “The first product of self-knowledge is humility,” Flannery O’Connor once said. This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves.”

— Ryan Holiday

289. “Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps. It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty.”

— Ryan Holiday

290. “No one achieves excellence or enlightenment without a desire to get better, without a tendency to explore potential areas of improvement.”

— Ryan Holiday

291. “And it works. Small tweaks can change what once felt like impossible tasks. Suddenly, where we felt weak, we realize we are strong. With perspective, we discover leverage we didn’t know we had.”

— Ryan Holiday

292. “On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind – I am awakening to the work of a human being.”

— Ryan Holiday

293. “Those people with an entrepreneurial spirit are like animals, blessed to have no time and no ability to think about the ways things should be, or how they’d prefer them to be. For all species other than us humans, things just are what they are. Our problem is that we’re always trying to figure out what things mean – why things are the way they are. As though the why matters. Emerson put it best: “We cannot spend the day in explanation.” Don’t waste time on false constructs.”

— Ryan Holiday

294. “Longfellow captured the true heroism of Florence Nightingale in a poem. It wasn’t just her bravery, it wasn’t just the deprivations she endured without complaint. It was what she did for people. Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low.”

— Ryan Holiday

295. “We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out. – THEODORE ROOSEVELT.”

— Ryan Holiday

296. “We must understand that we are a small part of an interconnected universe. On top of all this, we have to build an organization and a system around what we do – one that is about the work and not about us.”

— Ryan Holiday

297. “We must master ourselves unless we’d prefer to be mastered by someone or something else.”

— Ryan Holiday

298. “A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money.”

— Ryan Holiday

299. “As Viktor Frankl puts it in The Will to Meaning, “Man is pushed by drives but pulled by values.” These values and inner awareness prevent us from being puppets.”

— Ryan Holiday

300. “No need to be too hard on yourself. Hold yourself to a higher standard but not an impossible one. And forgive yourself if and when you slip up.”

— Ryan Holiday