Top 500 Ryan Holiday Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “Richard Branson likes to say, is that “business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another coming around.”

— Ryan Holiday

404. “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

405. “He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. – ADAM SMITH.”

— Ryan Holiday

406. “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

407. “The writer Anne Lamott jokes in Bird by Bird, “Ever wonder what God thinks of money? Just look at the people he gives it to.”

— Ryan Holiday

408. “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

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

412. “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

413. “There’s an old line about how if you want to live happy, live hidden.”

— Ryan Holiday

414. “Listen and connect with people, don’t perform for them.”

— Ryan Holiday

415. “Let’s make one thing clear: we never earn the right to be greedy or to pursue our interests at the expense of everyone else. To think otherwise is not only egotistical, it’s counterproductive.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

418. “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

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

— Ryan Holiday

420. “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

421. “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

422. “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

423. “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

424. “The observing eye sees what is. The perceiving eye sees what things supposedly.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

426. “There’s an old proverb that money doesn’t change people, it just makes them more of who they are. Robert Caro has written that “power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals.” In some ways, prosperity – financial and personal – is the same way.”

— Ryan Holiday

427. “Forgive them; they are deprived of truth. They wouldn’t do this if they weren’t. Use this knowledge to be gentle and gracious.”

— Ryan Holiday

428. “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

429. “How often does that happen to us? We comfort a friend during a breakup, only to be surprised when our own relationship ends. We must prepare in our minds for the possibility of extreme reversals of fate. The next time you make a donation to charity, don’t just think about the good turn you’re doing, but take a moment to consider that one day you may need to receive charity yourself.”

— Ryan Holiday

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

— Ryan Holiday

431. “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

432. “How different would the world look if people spent as much time listening to their conscience as they did to chattering broadcasts? If they could respond to the calls of their convictions as quickly as we answer the dings and rings of technology in our pockets?”

— Ryan Holiday

433. “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

434. “Very few go astray who comport themselves with restraint. – CONFUCIUS.”

— Ryan Holiday

435. “Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life. Focus on what is in front of you, right now. Ignore what it “represents” or it “means” or “why it happened to you.” There is plenty else going on right here to care about any of that.”

— Ryan Holiday

436. “The combination of power, fear, and mania can be deadly. The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first. Afraid that he’s not well liked, he works so hard to get others to like him that it has the opposite effect. Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement. And on and on – the things we fear or dread, we blindly inflict on ourselves.”

— Ryan Holiday

437. “Most happy people don’t need you to know how happy they are – they aren’t thinking about you at all.”

— Ryan Holiday

438. “There is a helpful analogy to explain the logos: We are like a dog leashed to a moving cart. The direction of the cart will determine where we go. Depending on the length of the leash, we also have a fair amount of room to explore and determine the pace, but ultimately what each of us must choose is whether we will go willingly or be painfully dragged. Which will it be?”

— Ryan Holiday

439. “At one time or another, we all indulge this sort of gratifying label making. Yet every culture seems to produce words of caution against it. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Don’t cook the sauce before catching the fish. The way to cook a rabbit is first to catch a rabbit. Game slaughtered by words cannot be skinned. Punching above your weight is how you get injured. Pride goeth before the fall.”

— Ryan Holiday

440. “One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.”

— Ryan Holiday

441. “We have to do the kind of thinking that 99 percent of the population is just not doing, and we have to stop doing the destructive thinking that they spend 99 percent of their time doing.”

— Ryan Holiday

442. “Rockefeller had sangfroid: unflappable coolness under pressure. He could keep his head while he was losing his shirt. Better yet, he kept his head while everyone else lost theirs.”

— Ryan Holiday

443. “Be natural and yourself and this glittering flattery will be as the passing breeze of the sea on a warm summer day.”

— Ryan Holiday

444. “Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.”

— Ryan Holiday

445. “The gift of free will is that in this life we can choose to be good or we can choose to be bad. We can choose what standards to hold ourselves to and what we will regard as important, honorable, and admirable. The choices we make in that regard determine whether we will experience peace or not.”

— Ryan Holiday

446. “Sometimes, staying put, going sideways, or moving backward is actually the best way to eliminate what blocks or impedes your path.”

— Ryan Holiday

447. “When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go – carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”

— Ryan Holiday

448. “A great destiny, Seneca reminds us, is great slavery.”

— Ryan Holiday

449. “The goodness inside you is like a small flame, and you are its keeper. It’s your job, today and every day, to make sure that it has enough fuel... every person has their own version of the flame... so long as your flame flickers, there will be some light in the world.”

— Ryan Holiday

450. “You know what is a better response to an attack or a slight or something you don’t like? Love. That’s right, love.”

— Ryan Holiday