Ryan Holiday Quotes

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

Just because you’ve begun down one path doesn’t mean you’re committed to it forever , especially if that path turns out to be flawed or impeded. At that same time, this is not an excuse to be flighty or incessantly noncommittal.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. — RALPH WALDO EMERSON

You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that — your impulses — reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.

People turn shit into sugar all the time — shit that’s a lot worse than whatever we’re dealing with. I’m talking physical disabilities, racial discrimination, battles against overwhelmingly superior armies. But those people didn’t quit. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves. They didn’t delude themselves with fantasies about easy solutions. They focused on the one thing that mattered: applying themselves with gusto and creativity.

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

On the path to successful action, we will fail — possibly many times. And that’s okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting — because they’ve taken failure the wrong way.

To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.

When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?” — EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.13.1

The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.

The reason the knives are so sharp online is because the pie is so small.

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.

As a young basketball player, Bill Bradley would remind himself, “When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.

What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.

"When we aim high, pressure and stress obligingly come along for the ride. Stuff is going to happen that catches us off guard, threatens or scares us. Surprises (unpleasant ones, mostly) are almost guaranteed. The risk of being overwhelmed is always there. In these situations, talent is not the most sought-after characteristic. Grace and poise are, because these two attributes precede the opportunity to deploy any other skill. We must possess, as Voltaire once explained about the secret to the great military success of the first Duke of Marlborough, that "tranquil courage in the midst of tumult and serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head.