Ryan Holiday Quotes

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.

Only a fool goes with their first thought. A wise person takes time to contemplate.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life,” Joan Didion observed, “is the source from which self-respect springs.

Routine, done for long enough and done sincerely enough, becomes more than routine. It becomes ritual — it becomes sanctified and holy.

Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.

Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.

In its own way, the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change. That someone decided not to fund your company, this isn’t up to you. But the decision to refine and improve your pitch? That is. That someone stole your idea or got to it first? No. To pivot, improve it, or fight for what’s yours? Yes.

Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems. You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable. You’d have countless new relationships. You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road. That’s what the canvas strategy is about — helping yourself by helping others.

The mind must be given relaxation — it will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced — for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break — so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.” — SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND,

Sleep is an act of character.

Knowledge and experience are not at odds; the latter is simply another form of the former.

Remember, if there is one core teaching at the heart of this philosophy, it’s that we’re not as smart and as wise as we’d like to think we are. If we ever do want to become wise, it comes from the questioning and from humility — not, as many would like to think, from certainty, mistrust, and arrogance.

A person that thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.

We have to find the people who can teach us and open ourselves to learning from them. Whatever stage of life we’re in, there is someone who knows more than us, who has been through more than us, who can open doors for us.

Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing.