Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Under the comb the tangle and the straight path are the same. – HERACLITUS.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

303. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

306. “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. Or whether we will tell one at all. Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished. And that is your decision.”

— Ryan Holiday

307. “It’s not that we need to believe that God is great, only that God is greater than us.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

309. “Twitter isn’t designed to help you get in and get out with the best information as quickly as possible – it’s supposed to suck you into either a contentious world of argument and debate or an echo chamber that reassures you everyone thinks like you do.”

— Ryan Holiday

310. “Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, your worst enemy already lives inside you: your ego.”

— Ryan Holiday

311. “When people are: – rude or disrespectful: They underestimate us. A huge advantage. – conniving: We won’t have to apologize when we make an example out of them. – critical or question our abilities: Lower expectations are easier to exceed. – lazy: Makes whatever we accomplish seem all the more admirable.”

— Ryan Holiday

312. “What was so special about Belisarius was that he accepted the bargain. Doing the right thing was enough. Serving his country, his God, and doing his duty faithfully was all that mattered. Any adversity could be endured and any rewards were considered extra.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

314. “Socrates had a mean, nagging wife; he always said that being married to her was good practice for philosophy.”

— Ryan Holiday

315. “No slavery is more disgraceful,” he quipped, “than one which is self-imposed.”

— Ryan Holiday

316. “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

317. “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

318. “That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin,” Montaigne had inscribed on the beam of his ceiling. It’s a quote from the playwright Menander, and it ends with “you who think yourself to be someone.”

— Ryan Holiday

319. “Duris dura franguntur. Hard things are broken by hard things.”

— Ryan Holiday

320. “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

321. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

329. “If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I? – HILLEL.”

— Ryan Holiday

330. “There is a beautiful dialogue called “Icaromenippus, an Aerial Expedition” by the poet Lucian in which the narrator is given the ability to fly and sees the world from above. Turning his eyes earthward, he sees how comically small even the richest people, the biggest estates, and entire empires look from above. All their battles and concerns were made petty in perspective.”

— Ryan Holiday

331. “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

332. “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

333. “The power of being a student is not just that it is an extended period of instruction, it also places the ego and ambition in someone else’s hands.”

— Ryan Holiday

334. “Mere gossip anticipates real talk, and to express what is still in thought weakens action by forestalling it.”

— Ryan Holiday

335. “If we expect to be leaders, we must see that thankless service comes with the job. We must do what leaders do, because it’s what leaders do – not for the credit, not for the thanks, not for the recognition. It’s our duty.”

— Ryan Holiday

336. “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

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

340. “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

341. “Don’t spend much time thinking about what other people think. Think about what you think. Think instead about the results, about the impact, about whether it is the right thing to do.”

— Ryan Holiday

342. “The image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills, or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea. Instead, they are the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace.”

— Ryan Holiday

343. “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

344. “Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are and what you stand for? Or are you too busy chasing unimportant things, mimicking the wrong influences, and following disappointing or unfulfilling or nonexistent paths?”

— Ryan Holiday

345. “Seneca writes that unbruised prosperity is weak and easy to defeat in the ring, but “a man who has been at constant feud with misfortunes acquires a skin calloused by suffering.” This man, he says, fights all the way to the ground and never gives up. That’s what Epictetus means too. What kind of boxer are you if you leave because you get hit? That’s the nature of the sport! Is that going to stop you from continuing?”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

347. “A mind that isn’t in control of itself, that doesn’t understand its power to regulate itself, will be jerked around by external events and unquestioned impulses.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

349. “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

350. “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