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Ryan Holiday Quotes

Total quotes: 55
“All we need to do are these three little duties—to try hard, to be honest, and to help ourselves and others.”
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Inspirational, Helping Others, Our Responsibilities As Humans
“When everyone tells you you’re wrong and you turn out to be right, you learn a dangerous lesson: Never listen to warnings.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Contrarian, thinking differently, Ego Boosters
“Loss inherently makes the loser sympathetic. We can easily be made to feel bad for the person on the other side of a true catastrophe, even if just minutes before we thought they had it coming to them.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Human Nature, Looking at Loss, vulnerability, Pity
“To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice—a choice that is up to us.”
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Inspirational, Obstacles
“The benefit of control and self-sovereignty—is its own kind of freedom.”
— Ryan Holiday, 29 Pieces Of Life Changing Advice I Collected By My 29th Birthday
Tagged: Constraints, The Joy of Restraint, The Freedom of Restraint
“The bigger the ego the harder the fall.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Independence, Follow Your Dreams, Make It Happen
“Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Impressive, How To Be Impressive
“If you want to try to make the world a slightly better place, there’s a lot you can do. But only one thing guarantees an impact. Step away from the simulation. Step away from the argument. Dig yourself out of the rubble. Stop wasting time with how things should be, would be, could be.

Be that thing.”
— Ryan Holiday, Don’t Waste Time Arguing What A Good Man Is. Be One
Tagged: Ethics, How To Be, How A Person Should Be
“Pick up a book on a topic you know next to nothing about. Put yourself in rooms where you’re the least knowledgeable person. That uncomfortable feeling, that defensiveness that you feel when your most deeply held assumptions are challenged— what about subjecting yourself to it deliberately? Change your mind. Change your surroundings… An amateur is defensive. The professional finds learning (and even, occasionally, being shown up) to be enjoyable; they like being challenged and humbled, and engage in education as an ongoing and endless process.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Amateurs vs. Professionals, What Makes Someone A Professional, How To Learn, Work Strategies, Mix It Up, Get Confused
“As a creator, you need to actively bake the marketing into your product.”
— Ryan Holiday, 21 Marketing Lessons Every Creative Needs to Master
Tagged: Marketing
“What was once inconceivable becomes not just obvious but glaringly so.”
— Ryan Holiday, Why Are We So Certain About Our Mistakes? A Technique To Avoid Future Regret
Tagged: Writing
“To try to break a man is one thing, to see him broken before you is another.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Doing Harm, Fighting, Knocking Someone Out
“We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all.”
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Narrative Creation, Story of Our Lives, Soundtrack of Our Lives, What We Say To Ourselves
“But a trial is not about a judge— who is an arbiter in matters of law. It’s about a jury— who are arbiters in matters of fact, but make decisions, like all human beings, based on emotion.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Law, The justice system, Reason, Emotion vs. reason, Decisions, Epistemology
“It doesn’t make a difference because really good stuff is timeless. It doesn’t need to be rushed.”
— Ryan Holiday, How to Create a Perennial Bestseller
Tagged: Focus On The Long-Term
“It doesn’t matter whether this is the worst time to be alive or the best, whether you’re in a good job market or a bad one, or that the obstacle you face is intimidating or burdensome. What matters right now is right now.”
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: The Power of Now
“Focusing on smaller, progressive parts of the work also eliminates the tendency to sit on your ass and dream indefinitely.”
— Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
Tagged: Incremental Growth, Stop Procrastinating, procrastination
“Classics stay classic and become more so over time. Think of it as compound interest for creative work.”
— Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
Tagged: What Makes A Classic Book, Classic
“Ask yourself: If other people knew I was doing this, would I be embarrassed or ashamed? If so, it’s probably not a good thing to be doing.”
— Ryan Holiday, 21 Stoic Life Hacks For #Stoicweek
Tagged: Life Hacks, How To Make A Decision, How To Live A Good Life, Making Smart Decisions
“Humble in our aspirations. Gracious in our success. Resilient in our failures.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Failure, Humble, How To Be A Good Person
“It’s a temptation that exists for everyone— for talk and hype to replace action.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Talk Hype, Hype, Walk the Walk, Don't Just Talk The Talk, Ego
“A person who can think long term doesn’t pity herself during short-term setbacks.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Long Term, The Obstacle Is The Way, Don't Pity Yourself
“When someone categorizes something evil, as Sherman did, as Peter and Mr. A repeatedly did, he implicitly gives himself permission to do what needs to be done to destroy it.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Ethics, Morality, Evil, Justice, Redemption vs Revenge, Revenge
“I reject the idea that the pot is nearly at a boil and I must watch it closely until the exact moment that it happens.”
— Ryan Holiday, Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News.
Tagged: Media, News, Twitter, Social Media, Politics, Zen, For when things seem hard, My aesthetic
“Sometimes because we can’t face what’s been said or what’s been done, we do the unthinkable in response to the unbearable: we escalate. This is ego in its purest and most toxic form.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Keep Your Cool, Ego Lashes Out, How Not To Act Under Pressure
“If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Ego, Honest Communication
“Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Power, Reach
“To all those who are conspiring, and all those who deserve to be conspired against...”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Conspiracies
“His question is not: How many games do you want to win? It’s how good do you want to be?”
— Ryan Holiday, How Good Do You Want To Be?
Tagged: Career, Ego, Before and after
“If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.”
— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Tagged: Reputation
“Gawker’s first editor, Elizabeth Spiers, was paid $ 2,000 per month for twelve posts a day, seven days a week.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Money, Gawker, Writers and money
“If the continued effect of Valleywag is that it makes Silicon Valley 1 percent less ambitious, what is that cost?”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Gawker, Media, Valleywag
“Go onto a battlefield, live in a house a couple hundred years old and you'll realize that a lot of people came before you and many will come after.

You're not special or unique. Just a person doing their best.”
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Thinking Of Others
“fake news is probably closer to the actual heritage of journalism than truth-telling is.”
— Ryan Holiday, We Don’t Have a Fake News Problem—We Are the Fake News Problem
Tagged: Media, News, Fake News
“By 1939, Franz Halder, a German general, had taken to carrying a pistol so that when he was in the room with Hitler, he might assassinate him. But he could never pull the trigger. He could not reconcile how he could take up as “human being and a Christian to shoot down an unarmed man.””
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Hitler, Ethics, Morality, Utilitarianism
“Discretion is the responsibility of freedom.”
— Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Freedom, trolling, Social Media
“I prefer to get my news from books.”
— Ryan Holiday, What is your preferred news source?
Tagged: News, Media, Books, Quote of the Moment
“To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus. We must set out, from the beginning, with complete and total commitment to the idea that our best chance of success starts during the creative process.”
— Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
Tagged: Becoming Awesome, Being Great
“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Potential, Motivational
“There is plenty to do in this world, and plenty to be vigilant about. But let’s stop pretending that the ticker-tape of the news feed is anything other than what it is: addiction and manipulation masquerading as a social good. Then we wonder why we’re sapped of reason and willpower and perspective.”
— Ryan Holiday, Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News.
Tagged: Media, News, Twitter, Social Media, Politics
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