Ryan Holiday Quotes

“Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more ‘Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.’ It’s rarely the truth: ‘I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.’ ”

“In this course, it is not ‘Who do I want to be in life?’ but ‘What is it that I want to accomplish in life?’ Setting aside selfish interest, it asks: What calling does it serve? What principles govern my choices? Do I want to be like everyone else or do I want to do something different?”

“Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.”

“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.”

“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.’ ”

“It’s a temptation that exists for everyone- for talk and hype to replace action.”

“It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest.”

“ ‘A man is worked upon by what he works on,’ Frederick Douglass once said. He would know. He’d been a slave, and he saw what it did to everyone involved, including the slaveholders themselves. Once a free man, he saw that the choices people made, about their careers and their lives, had the same effect. What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you. The egocentric path requires, as Boyd knew, many compromises.”

“Just because you are quiet doesn’t mean that you are without pride. Privately thinking you’re better than others is still pride. It’s still dangerous.”

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

“This is what the ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn’t.”

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

“You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”

“Ego is its own worst enemy. It hurts the ones we love too. Our families and friends suffer for it. So do our customers, fans, and clients. A critic of napoleon nailed it when remarking: ‘He [Napoleon] despises the nation whose applause he seeks.’ He couldn’t help but see the French people as pieces to be manipulated, people he had to be better than, people who, unless they were totally, unconditionally supportive of him, were against him.”

“Ego needs honours 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.”

“In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world.”

“Ego is the enemy- giving us wicked feedback, disconnected from reality. It’s defensive, precisely when we cannot afford to be defensive. It blocks us from improving by telling us that we don’t need to improve. Then we wonder why we don’t get the results we want, why others are better and why their success is more lasting.”

“Passion is seen in those who can tell you in great detail who they intend to become and what their success will be like- they might even be able to tell you specifically when they intend to achieve it or describe to you legitimate and sincere worries they have about the burdens of such accomplishments. They can tell you all the things they’re going to do, or have even begun, but they cannot show you their progress. Because there rarely is any.”

“Our ego wants the ideas and the fact that we aspire to do something about them to be enough.”

“The same goes for us, whatever we do. Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution- and on executing with excellence.”

“An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing.”

“But thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency. It doesn’t need to be depressing. Because it’s invigorating.”

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”

“Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive.”

“Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.”

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”

“Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful.”

“Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.”

“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.”

“Think progress, not perfection.”

“Failure really can be an asset if what you’re trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new.”

“Failure shows us the way—by showing us what isn’t the way.”

“First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.”

“How we interpret the events in our lives, our perspective, is the framework for our forthcoming response—whether there will even be one or whether we’ll just lie there and take it.”

“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. Don’t waste time on false constructs.”

“Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.”

“If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it’s what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it.”

“No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget ‘manliness.’ If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.”

“It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.”

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

“Nearly anything you want, whenever you want it, however you’d like it, it’s yours. This is our human right. As it should be.”

“Technology, access, success, power, privilege- this is only a blessing when accompanied by the second of the cardinal virtues: self-restraint.”

“His greatness, like all true greatness, was not rooted in aggression or ego or his appetites or a vast fortune, but in simplicity and restraint- in how he commanded himself, which in turn made him worthy of commanding others.”

“Even those with fewer freedoms still face countless daily choices about which urges to indulge, what actions they’ll take, what they’ll accept or demand from themselves.”

“It’s easy to be disciplined when you have nothing. What about when you have everything? What about when you’re so talented that you can get away with not giving everything?”

“You have to do your best while you still have a chance. Life is short.”

“No one has a harder time than the lazy. No one experiences more pain than the glutton. No success is shorter lived than the reckless or endlessly ambitious.”

“Freedom requires discipline. Discipline gives us freedom. Freedom and greatness. Your destiny is there. Will you grab the reins?”

“He wasn’t born an athlete. He made himself one.”

“Greed moves the goalposts, preventing one from ever enjoying what one has.”