800 Best Ryan Holiday Quotes: Courageous Resilience (2023)
1. “Our duty is to do the right thing—right now.”
2. “While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going soft. You’re not aggressive enough. You’re not pressing ahead. You’ve got a million reasons why you can’t move at a faster pace. This all makes the obstacles in your life loom very large.”
3. “You’ve got to get yourself—and your perceptions—under control.”
4. “In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.”
5. “Our job is not to 'go with our gut' or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong.”
6. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call.”
7. “Whatever you’re going through, whatever is holding you down or standing in your way, can be turned into a source of strength—by thinking of people other than yourself. You won’t have time to think of your own suffering because there are other people suffering and you’re too focused on them.”
8. “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.”
9. “Take action. Get out from under all your stuff. Get rid of it. Give away what you don’t need. You were born free—free of stuff, free of burden. But since the first time they measured your tiny body for clothes, people have been foisting stuff upon you. And you’ve been adding links to the pile of chains yourself ever since.”
10. “Bad luck is actually a chance for us to make up some time. We're like runners who train on hills, or at an altitude so they can beat the runners who expected the course would be flat.”
11. “It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit.”
12. “There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up. No one said it would be easy and, of course, the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.”
13. “If you ask most smart or successful people where they learned their craft, they will not talk to you about their time in school. It’s always a mentor, a particularly transformative job, or a period of experimentation or trial and error.” – Ryan Holiday
14. “The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you “push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.”
15. “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. —HERBERT SIMON”
16. “sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home.”
17. “Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.” Ryan Holiday
18. “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.”
19. “How you do anything is how you can do everything.”
20. “Man is pushed by drives, but he is pulled by values — Viktor Frankl”
21. “1. Accept only what is true. 2. Work for the common good. 3. Match our needs and wants with what is in our control. 4. Embrace what nature has in store for us.”
22. “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?”
23. “Ordinary people shy away from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune – really anything, everything to their advantage.” Ryan Holiday
24. “Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, outlined when he described what happens to businesses in tumultuous times: “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”
25. “Perfectionism rarely begets perfection—only disappointment.”
26. “What you face right now could, should, and can be such a path. Wisdom or ignorance? Ego is the swing vote.”
27. “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.”
28. “The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.”
29. “to be a philosopher in all that you do, and if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself first that you are and you will succeed.”
30. “Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.”
31. “your mind is the asset that must be worked on most—and understood best.”
32. “take the trouble you’re dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment.”
33. “Up ahead there will be: Slights. Dismissals. Little fuck yous. One-sided compromises. You’ll get yelled at. You’ll have to work behind the scenes to salvage what should have been easy. All this will make you angry. This will make you want to fight back. This will make you want to say: I am better than this. I deserve more.”
34. “A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.”
35. “No need to be too hard on yourself. Hold yourself to a higher standard but not an impossible one. And forgive yourself if and when you slip up.”
36. “What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him. – GOETHE.”
37. “If your nerve holds, then nothing really did “happen”—our perception made sure it was nothing of consequence.”
38. “every rational person can convert any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose.”
39. “exert only calculated force where it will be effective, rather than straining and struggling with pointless attrition tactics.”
40. “Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.”
41. “Pillars of mental and physical health and performance:
42. “All we need to do is those three little duties—to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That’s all that’s been asked of us. No more and no less.”
43. “Instead, tranquility and peace are found in identifying our path and in sticking to it: staying the course—making adjustments here and there, naturally—but ignoring the distracting sirens who beckon us to turn toward the rocks.”
44. “Many Relationships and Moments of Inner Peace Were Sacrificed on the Altar of Achievement.”
45. “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.”
46. “First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.”
47. “Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”
48. “Failure shows us the way—by showing us what isn’t the way.” – Ryan Holiday
49. “It doesn’t make a difference because really good stuff is timeless. It doesn’t need to be rushed.”
50. “Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it—no Stoic would tolerate that assumption—but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won’t.”
51. “That’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? 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.”
52. “Let others slap each others on the back while you're back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement.”
53. “Each fighter, to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against.”
54. “Is there anything sadder than the immense lengths we’ll go to impress someone? The things we’ll do to earn someone’s approval can seem, when examined in retrospect, like the result of some temporary form of insanity.”
55. “If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.”
56. “Sun Tzu would say that it is best to win without fighting—to have maneuvered in such a way that the enemy has lost before it has even begun.”
57. “Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort.”
58. “Again, the event is the same: Someone messed up. But the evaluation and the outcome are different.”
59. “Doing great work is a struggle. It's draining, it's demoralizing, it's frightening. We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty. The greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void, facing it instead of scrambling to make it go away. The question is, when faced with your particular challenge, do you seek the respite of talk or do you face the struggle head-on?”
60. “Give More. Give What You Didn’t Get. Love More. Despite Any Old Story. Try It, If You Can”
61. “In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what you’ve been given.” Ryan Holiday
62. “Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.”
63. “any fool can learn from experience. The trick is to learn from other people’s experience.”
64. “destruction—of every one of our obstacles.”
65. “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.”
66. “Someone can’t frustrate you, work can’t overwhelm you—these are external objects, and they have no access to your mind.”
67. “Materiam superabat opus (La calidad del trabajo es mejor que el material).”
68. “How do you prevent derailment? Well, often we fall in love with an image of what success looks like.”
69. “The bigger the ego the harder the fall.”
70. “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.”
71. “Problems are rarely as bad as we think-or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.”
72. “She had purpose. She had direction. She wasn’t driven by passion, but by reason.”
73. “Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. William Ernest Henley”
74. “doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just”
75. “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.”
76. “He had the strength to resist temptation or excitement, no matter how seductive, no matter the situation.”
77. “If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.”
78. “We forget: 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.”
79. “It’s a cliché question to ask, What would I change about my life if the doctor told me I had cancer? After our answer, we inevitably comfort ourselves with the same insidious lie: Well, thank God I don’t have cancer.”
80. “You owe it to yourself and to the world to actively engage with the brief moment you have with this planet. You cannot retreat exclusively into ideas. You must contribute.”
81. “Where we decide to put our energy decides what we’ll ultimately accomplish.”
82. “We don’t need pity—our own or anyone else’s—we need purpose, poise, and patience.”
83. “Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.”
84. “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.”
85. “Mental and Spiritual Independence Matter Little If the Things We Own in the Physical World End up Owning us.”
86. “Say little, do much”
87. “Disfruta tu relajación como un poeta, no ociosamente sino activamente, observa el mundo a tu alrededor, absórbelo todo, comprende mejor tu lugar en el universo. Tómate un día libre del trabajo de vez en cuando, pero no de aprender.”
88. “Sherman had a good rule he tried to observe. “Never give reasons for what you think or do until you must. Maybe,”
89. “Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. —RAINER MARIA RILKE”
90. “Publicity does not come easily, profits do not come easily, and knowledge does not come easily.”
91. “The belief that an individual can make a difference is the first step. The next is understanding that you can be that person.”
92. “I was there to deface billboards, specifically billboards I had designed and paid for. Not that I’d expected to do anything like this, but there I was, doing it.”
93. “This is also confidence. Which needs neither congratulations nor glory in which to revel, because it is an honest understanding of our strengths and weakness that reveals the path to a greater glory: inner peace and a clear mind.”
94. “This is what the best journals look like. They aren’t for the reader. They are for the writer. To slow the mind down. To wage peace with oneself.”
95. “Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished.”
96. “BE RUTHLESS TO THE THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER”
97. “Working really late is overrated and usually the result of poor planning.” Ryan Holiday
98. “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. —COLIN POWELL”
99. “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 facie is intimidating or burdensome. What matters right now is right now.”
100. “To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
101. “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.”
102. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”
103. “When you worry, ask yourself, ‘What am I choosing to not see right now?’ What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?”
104. “You just learn to stop thinking about what they think. You’ll never do original work if you can’t.”
105. “This is what the ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn’t.”
106. “For nothing outside my reasoned choice can hinder or harm it—my reasoned choice alone can do this to itself.”
107. “Humility is clearer-eyed than ego – and that’s important because humility always works harder than ego. ” – Ryan Holiday
108. “There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed.”
109. “That is what journaling is about. It’s spiritual windshield wipers, as the writer Julia Cameron once put it.”
110. “Leisure Is Not the Absence of Activity, It Is Activity. What Is Absent Is Any External Justification.”
111. “Adversity can harden you. Or it can loosen you up and make you better – if you let it.”
112. “The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That’s all you need to know. —MARCUS AURELIUS”
113. “No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tightfisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”
114. “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.”
115. “There is clarity (and joy) in seeing what others can’t see, in finding grace and harmony in places others overlook. Isn’t that far better than seeing the world as some dark place?”
116. “I cannot understand how some people live without communicating with the wisest people who ever lived on earth.”
117. “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.”
118. “We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU”
119. “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.”
120. “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.”
121. “We can be Edison, our factory on fire, not bemoaning our fate but enjoying the spectacular scene. And then starting the recovery effort the very next day—roaring back soon enough.”
122. “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength. ” Ryan Holiday
123. “Para parafrasear a Epicuro, quienes tienen ideas narcisistas viven en una “ciudad sin muros”. Nuestro frágil sentido del yo está bajo constante amenaza. Las ilusiones, los logros, eso no sirve de defensa. No cuando tenemos esa sensible antena especial entrenada para recibir (y crear) las señales que desafían nuestro precario balance.
124. “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.”
125. “If we’re to overcome our obstacles, this is the message to broadcast—internally and externally. We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise. We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile.”
126. “It’s far better that we become pragmatic and adaptable—able to do what we need to do anywhere, anytime. The place to do your work, to live the good life, is here.”
127. “A smart man or woman must regularly remind themselves of the limits of their power and reach.”
128. “There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try:
129. “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.”
130. “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.”
131. “It is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”
132. “situations, by themselves, cannot be good or bad.”
133. “The Germans have a word for it: Sitzfleisch. Staying power. Winning by sticking your ass to the seat and not leaving until after it’s over.”
134. “The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.”
135. “Live on in your blessings, your destiny’s been won. But ours calls us on from one ordeal to the next. —VIRGIL”
136. “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.”
137. “Richard Branson likes to say, is that “business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another coming around.”
138. “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.”
139. “Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be.”
140. “Adversity can harden you. Or it can loosen you up and make you better if you let it.” Ryan Holiday
141. “Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.”
142. “He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. —ROBERT FROST”
143. “But it's what I feel.
144. “You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there.”
145. “Get your day scheduled. Limit the interruptions. Limit the number of choices you need to make.”
146. “she simply chose to see each situation for what it could be—accompanied by hard work and a little upbeat spirit.”
147. “Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.”
148. “It takes real work to grasp what is invisible to just about everyone else.”
149. “How you handle even minor adversity might seem like nothing, but, in fact, it reveals every
150. “If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.”
151. “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters—don’t wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.”
152. “Modern philosopher Nassim Taleb has warned of the “narrative fallacy”—the tendency to assemble unrelated events of the past into stories. These stories, however gratifying to create, are inherently misleading. They lead to a sense of cohesion and certainty that isn’t real.”
153. “Just like the overactive voice in a slump, the voice in a streak is an equally deleterious racing mental loop. Both get in the way. Both make a hard thing harder.”
154. “As a creator, you need to actively bake the marketing into your product.”
155. “Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception preceded action. Right action follows the right perspective.” Ryan Holiday
156. “You don't convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there.”
157. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition”
158. “Think progress, not perfection.” Ryan Holiday
159. “Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it—no Stoic
160. “It’s not by eliminating outside influences or running away to quiet and solitude. Instead, it’s about filtering the outside world through the straightener of our judgment.”
161. “Great times are great softeners.” Ryan Holiday
162. “Listen and connect with people, don’t perform for them.”
163. “We underestimate our capabilities just as much and just as dangerously as we overestimate other abilities. Cultivate the ability to judge yourself accurately and honestly. Look inward to discern what you’re capable of and what it will take to unlock that potential.”
164. “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. —ALAN WATTS”
165. “If you’re afraid to fail then you’re probably going to fail.”Kobe Bryant
166. “What is bad luck? Opinion. What are conflict, dispute, blame, accusation, irreverence, and frivolity? They are all opinions,”
167. “The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see?”
168. “Just one thing keeps ego around—comfort. Pursuing great work—whether it is in sports or art or business—is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity.”
169. “today, will you be part of the problem or part of the solution? Will you hear the wisdom of the world or drown it out with more noise?”
170. “Their lifestyle is the result of prioritizing.”
171. “Many of our problems come from having too much: rapid technological disruption, junk food, traditions that tell us the way we’re supposed to live our lives. We’re soft, entitled, and scared of conflict. Great times are great softeners. Abundance can be its own obstacle, as many people can attest.”
172. “If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any growth in it.”
173. “There’s no time off. There aren’t even weekends. We are always preparing for what life might throw at us—and when it does, we’re ready and don’t stop until we’ve handled it.”
174. “The market was inherently unpredictable and often vicious—”
175. “Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on. It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves. You don’t stand in your own way. . . . Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there’s one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.”
176. “Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we’re unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality.”
177. “It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. 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.” Ryan Holiday
178. “No, I don’t like that idea.”
179. “Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.”
180. “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.”
181. “Failure shows us the way by showing us what isn’t the way.” Ryan Holiday
182. “Uninvited guests might arrive at your home, but you don’t have to ask them to stay for dinner. You don’t have to let them into your mind.”
183. “You’ve got your mission, whatever it is. To accomplish it, like the rest of us you’re in the pinch between the way you wish things were and the way they actually are (which always seem to be a disaster). How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do about it?”
184. “One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. —BERTRAND RUSSELL W”
185. “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.”
186. “PRACTICE OBJECTIVITY Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.”
187. “People who don’t read have no advantage over those who cannot read.”
188. “You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.” Ryan Holiday
189. “What is known can't jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit.”
190. “Okay, you've got to do something very difficult. Don't focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.”
191. “When it comes to your goals and the things you strive for, ask yourself: Am I in control of them or they in control of me?”
192. “See the things for what they are.
193. “If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way.”
194. “You don’t control the situation, but you control what you think about it.”
195. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
196. “preparation in the morning, reflection in the evening.”
197. “Success becomes a matter of momentum. Once you get a little, it’s easier to keep it going.”
198. “Being trapped is just a position, not a fate. You get out of it by addressing and eliminating each part of that position through small, deliberate actions—not by trying (and failing) to push it away with superhuman strength. With”
199. “Persist and resist”. Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. – Epictetus.”
200. “Do the hard thing now. Be steady and courageous today, in everything that counts.”
201. “Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can't actually influence is wasted, self-indulgent, and self-destructive.”
202. “See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom.”
203. “The key, then, is to support our natural inclination to justice with strong boundaries and strong commitments—to embrace, as Lincoln urged a divided, angry nation to do, “the better angels of our nature.”
204. “Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness?”
205. “It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest.”
206. “Build a life you don't need to escape from.”
207. “When everyone tells you you’re wrong and you turn out to be right, you learn a dangerous lesson: Never listen to warnings.”
208. “Don’t let the negativity in, don’t let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can’t afford to panic. This is the skill that must be cultivated—freedom from disturbance and perturbation—so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them.”
209. “You must put in place training and habits now to replace ignorance and ill discipline. Only then will you begin to behave and act”
210. “We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.”
211. “We can go around or under or backward. We can decide that momentum and defeat are not mutually exclusive—we can keep going, advancing, even if we’ve been stopped in one particular direction.”
212. “It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder.”
213. “The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.”
214. “The work of living is to set standards and then not compromise them.”
215. “Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself. When we believe in the obstacle more than in the goal, which will inevitably triumph?” – Ryan Holiday
216. “We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek.” Ryan Holiday
217. “What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT”
218. “You only control the effort, not the results.”
219. “No, I don’t want that. I’d rather make the most of what I already have.”
220. “The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself.”
221. “Let’s not let emotion get in the way of kathêkon, the simple, appropriate actions on the path to virtue.”
222. “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?”
223. “The reason the knives are so sharp online is because the pie is so small.”
224. “Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them? We might not be emperors, but the world is still constantly testing us. It asks: Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you’re made of?”
225. “To bear trials with a calm mind
226. “The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher.”
227. “Fuck my dreams of hearing ‘It’s perfect’ on the first try. I need to hear ‘It can be a lot better.”
228. “It’s important to connect the so-called temptation with its actual effects. Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal. In this way, self-control becomes the real pleasure, and the temptation becomes the regret.”
229. “... coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder...”
230. “Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation – without the pestilence of panic or fear.”
231. “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.”
232. “Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.”
233. “You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alterative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp.”
234. “to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear.”
235. “Courage, bravery, fortitude, honor, sacrifice . . . Temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance . . . Justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness . . . Wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace”
236. “How much more tolerant and understanding would you be today if you could see the actions of other people as attempts to do the right thing?”
237. “So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually instead of acting with conscientious deliberation. So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place. We’re reacting to shadows. We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test. We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look.”
238. “The economics of the Internet created a twisted set of incentives that make traffic more important—and more profitable—than the truth.”
239. “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.”
240. “Jesus told his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself.”
241. “Even one minute without playing the blame game is progress in the art of living.”
242. “Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles.”
243. “For any project, you must know what you are doing—and what you are not doing. You must also know who you are doing it for—and who you are not doing it for—to be able to say: THIS and for THESE PEOPLE. In”
244. “We defeat emotions with logic, or at least that’s the idea. Logic is questions and statements. With enough of them, we get to root causes (which are always easier to deal with).”
245. “That’s what Seneca is reminding us. As someone who was one of the richest men in Rome, he knew firsthand that money only marginally changes life. It doesn’t solve the problems that people without it seem to think it will. In fact, no material possession will. External things can’t fix internal issues.”
246. “You can take the bite out of any tough situation by bringing a calm mind to it. By considering it and meditating on it in advance.”
247. “Putting I in front of events.
248. “Most trouble is temporary… unless you make that not so. Recovery is not grand, it’s one step in front of the other. Unless your cure is more of the disease. Only”
249. “In the end, the only way you can appreciate your progress is to stand on the edge of the hole you dug for yourself, low down inside it, and smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls.”
250. “It’s supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren’t going to work. It’s going to take a lot out of you—but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It’s a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles.”
251. “Compare yourself against the progress you’ve made.” Ryan Holiday
252. “For Hercules, the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice.”
253. “Everyone is lying – about what they make. about how confident they feel. about how hard they work. about how well things are going. Stop comparing yourself to these lies. Stop thinking about them at all.” – Ryan Holiday
254. “What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better. —WENDELL PHILLIPS I”
255. “The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.”
256. “Without virtue and training, Aristotle observed, “it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably.”
257. “And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence.”
258. “In a world of distraction, focusing is a superpower.”
259. “Creativity is a matter of receptiveness and recognition. This cannot happen if you’re convinced the world revolves around you.”
260. “Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small.”
261. “You’re the chief marketing officer for YOU the company.” Ryan Holiday
262. “Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. —PUBLIUS SYRUS”
263. “The performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”
264. “Like any good school, learning from failure isn’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.”
265. “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.”
266. “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.”
267. “Wealth is able to buy the pleasures of eating, drinking and other sensual pursuits-yet can never afford a cheerful spirit or freedom from sorrow.”
268. “You've got to cultivate people around you who are not afraid to tell you the truth.”
269. “Why do good work when studies show that this is actually a deterrent to social sharing?”
270. “Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation—without the pestilence of panic or fear.”
271. “A critical test of any product: Does it have a purpose? Does it add value to the world? How will it improve the lives of the people who buy it?”
272. “The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments? It is far better to ask and answer these questions now, with the stakes still low, than it will be later. It’s worth saying: just”
273. “Snark encourages the fakeness and stupidity it is supposedly trying to rail against.”
274. “Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? Nope. Then get back to work! Subconsciously, we should be constantly asking ourselves this question: Do I need to freak out about this?”
275. “As Goethe once observed, the great failing is “to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.”
276. “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.”
277. “We are A to Z thinkers. Fretting about A, obsessing over Z, and yet forgetting all about B through Y.” Ryan Holiday
278. “Today, each of us receives our own call. To service. To take a risk. To challenge the status quo. To run toward while others run away. To rise above our station. To do what people say is impossible.”
279. “So what is scarce and rare? 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. Sherman”
280. “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. One”
281. “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.”
282. “Am I saying this because I want to prove how smart I am or am I saying this because it needs to be said.” Ryan Holiday
283. “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.”
284. “Knowledge—self-knowledge in particular—is freedom.”
285. “No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others.”
286. “Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished. And that is your decision.”
287. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
288. “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.”
289. “You love it because it’s all fuel. And you don’t just want fuel. You need it. You can’t go anywhere without it. No one or no thing can. So you’re grateful for it.”
290. “You’re young, you didn’t cause this, it isn’t your fault. We all got screwed. This only makes it easier to lose our sense of self, to say nothing of our sense of others.”
291. “Courage is honest commitment to noble ideals. The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, What’s the point anyway?”
292. “Don’t waste a second looking back at your expectations. Face forward, and face it with a smug little grin.”
293. “The worst is yet to come.”
294. “To do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We’ve got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens.”
295. “Remember that today when you try to extend your reach outward—that it’s much better and more appropriately directed inward.”
296. “Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.”
297. “See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must.”
298. “It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. —MARCUS AURELIUS”
299. “Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.”
300. “Am I saying this because I want to prove how smart I am or am I saying this because it needs to be said?”
301. “Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.”
302. “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.”
303. “Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
304. “The perceiving eye is weak, he wrote; the observing eye is strong.”
305. ‘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.’”
306. 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
307. “Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need. — MARCUS AURELIUS Overcoming”
308. “spend some time—real, uninterrupted time—thinking about what’s important to you, what your priorities are. Then, work toward that and forsake all the others. It’s not enough to wish and hope. One must act—and act right.”
309. “Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you. Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one.”
310. “We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek.”
311. “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”
312. “People who did what needed to be done. People who said, “If not me, then who?”
313. “We can’t take or receive feedback if we are incapable of or uninterested in hearing from outside sources. We can’t recognize opportunities—or create them—if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy.”
314. “Don’t spend much time thinking about what other people think. Think about what you think. Think instead about the results, about the impact, about whether it is the right thing to do.”
315. “A degree on a wall means you’re educated as much as shoes on your feet mean you’re walking. It’s a start, but hardly sufficient.”
316. “The great law of nature is that it never stops. There is no end.”
317. “Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.”
318. “To have an impulse and to resist it, to sit with it and examine it, to let it pass by like a bad smell—this is how we develop spiritual strength. This is how we become who we want to be in this world.”
319. “No, sorry, sounds great but I’d rather not.”
320. “Start small...on something big.”
321. “And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? 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.”
322. “Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?”
323. “There’s a saying about how the Irish ship captain located all the rocks in the harbor—using the bottom of his boat. Whatever works, right? Remember”
324. “Everything is change. Embrace that. Flow with it.”
325. “A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.”
326. “What things do you think have been holding you back that, in fact, can be a hidden source of strength?”
327. “So why on earth do you need thanks or recognition for having done the right thing? It’s your job.”
328. “It’s not that we need to believe that God is great, only that God is greater than us.”
329. “One man with courage makes a majority.”
330. “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
331. “Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today.”
332. “Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need. —MARCUS AURELIUS”
333. “It’s much easier to control our perceptions and emotions than it is to give up our desire to control other people and events.”
334. “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.”
335. “No thank you, I can’t afford to panic.”
336. “Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety. We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything.”
337. “Conning the conmen is one of life’s most satisfying pleasures.”
338. “What was once inconceivable becomes not just obvious but glaringly so.”
339. “We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist. We decide whether we’ll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.”
340. “Pageview journalism treats people by what they appear to want—from data that is unrepresentative to say the least—and gives them this and only this until they have forgotten that there could be anything else. It takes the audience at their worst and makes them worse.”
341. “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.”
342. “Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness -- these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing makes us feel this way; we choose to give in to such feelings. Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to.”
343. “Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go).”
344. “Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. —SHAKESPEARE”
345. “Epictetus told his students, when they’d quote some great thinker, to picture themselves observing the person having sex. It’s funny, you should try it the next time someone intimidates you or makes you feel insecure. See them in your mind, grunting, groaning, and awkward in their private life—just like the rest of us.”
346. “not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.”
347. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —RICHARD FEYNMAN”
348. “Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful.”
349. “these businesses had little awareness they were in some historically significant depression. Why? Because the founders were too busy existing in the present—actually dealing with the situation at hand.”
350. “A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul. —LEROY PERCY”
351. “Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.”
352. “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.”
353. “A true student is like a sponge. Absorbing what goes on around him, filtering it, latching on to what he can hold. A student is self-critical and self-motivated, always trying to improve his understanding so that he can move on to the next topic, the next challenge. A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.”
354. “We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all.”
355. “It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them. —LA ROCHEFOUCAULD I”
356. “The truth is that a good routine is not only a source of great comfort and stability, it’s the platform from which stimulating and fulfilling work is possible.”
357. “Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things.”
358. “Each day presents the chance to overthink things.”
359. “What we desire makes us vulnerable.”
360. “The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other. Let”
361. “Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. — RALPH WALDO EMERSON”
362. “Whether what you’re going through is your fault or your problem doesn’t matter, because it’s yours to deal with right now.”
363. “Adversity can harden you. Or it can loosen you up and make you better—if you let it.”
364. “No, I’m not available.”
365. “What matters most is not what our obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.” Ryan Holiday
366. “There is another apt Latin expression: Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship is better than the material.) The material we've been given genetically, emotionally, financially, that's where we begin. We don't control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it.”
367. “So today, as RSS buttons disappear from browsers and blogs, just know that this happened on purpose, so that readers could be deceived more easily.”
368. “We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek. Because we will be action and education focused, and forgo validation and status, our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative—one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.”
369. “Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.”
370. “Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation. When action is our priority, vanity falls away.”
371. “Today, let’s focus just on what’s in front of us.”
372. “Find out why you’re after what you’re after. Ignore those who mess with your pace. Let them covet what you have, not the other way around. ”
373. “sometimes being superficial—taking things only at first glance—is the most profound approach.”
374. “If the event must occur, Amor fati (a love of fate) is the response.”
375. “What I’ve learned most clearly from blogs is that the majority of them write about the problems from the outside for a reason – because they are missing the abilities that allow people to move to the inside.”
376. “To become empty is to become one with the divine—this is the Way. —AWA KENZO”
377. “Shaking off the bad stuff as it happens and soldiering on—staring straight ahead as though nothing has happened.”
378. “Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear,”
379. “Dollar for dollar there is no better investment in the world than a book.”
380. “Duris dura franguntur.”
381. “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
382. “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.”
383. “Where the head goes, the body follow. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.”
384. “Our first idea is a grand opening, a big launch, a press release, or major media coverage. We default to thinking we need an advertising budget. Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project.”
385. “False ideas about yourself destroy you. For”
386. “If fear is to be a driving force in your life, fear what you’ll miss. Fear what happens if you don’t act. Fear what they’ll think of you down the road, for having dared so little. Think of what you’re leaving on the table. Think of the terrifying costs of playing so small.”
387. “Every negative has a positive. Push a negative hard enough and deep enough that it will break through into its counterside.”
388. “Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.”
389. “Fix your attention on your intelligence. Let it do its thing.”
390. “What thrives online is not the writing that reflects anything close to the reality in which you and I live. Nor does it allow for the kind of change that will create the world we wish to live in.”
391. “It doesn’t matter who or how many come at you, you have to be you. Confidently. Authentically. Bravely.”
392. “We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions. On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person, or a situation, or with life itself.”
393. “And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice! —EURIPIDES”
394. “Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself. When we believe in the obstacle more than in the goal, which will inevitably triumph?”
395. “Accept only what is true. 2. Work for the common good. 3. Match our needs and wants with what is in our control. 4. Embrace what nature has in store for us.”
396. “serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment.”
397. “The founder of the universe, who assigned to us the laws of life, provided that we should live well, but not in luxury. Everything needed for our well-being is right before us, whereas what luxury requires is gathered by many miseries and anxieties. Let us use this gift of nature and count it among the greatest things”
398. “Humans are still primed to detect threats and dangers that no longer exist—think of the cold sweat when you’re stressed about money, or the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when your boss yells at you. Our safety is not truly at risk here—there is little danger that we will starve or that violence will break out—though it certainly feels that way sometimes.”
399. “It was an awards show. And they won! Why are we even talking about this?”
400. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about for being idle. It’s not reckless. It’s an investment. There is nourishment in pursuits that have no purpose—that is their purpose.”
401. “we don’t need to constantly compare ourselves with other people”
402. “Doing new things invariably means obstacles.”
403. “Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story.”
404. “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. —VIKTOR FRANKL”
405. “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.”
406. “In other words, through our perception of events, we are complicit in the creation—as well as the destruction—of”
407. “Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, your worst enemy already lives inside you: your ego.”
408. “Failure shows us the way – by showing us what isn’t the way.”
409. “With one approach you took advantage; with the other you succumbed to anger or fear.”
410. “Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion. How are we supposed to reach, motivate, or lead other people if we can’t relate to their needs—because we’ve lost touch with our own?”
411. “- be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.
412. “Seneca is the author you read when your life’s work has been destroyed.”
413. “We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.”
414. “Failure really can be an asset if what you’re trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new.”
415. “It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more. It’s remembering Socrates’ wisdom lay in the fact that he knew that he knew next to nothing.”
416. “The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can't afford to panic.”
417. “If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then passion is a form of mental retardation- deliberately blunting our most critical cognitive functions.”
418. “Howard Hughes, like so many wealthy people, died in an asylum of his own making.”
419. “Courage is risk. It is sacrifice . . . . . . commitment . . . perseverance . . . truth . . . determination.”
420. 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 Ego Is the Enemy
421. “Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF);”
422. “Every obstacle is unique to each of us. But the responses they elicit are the same: Fear. Frustration. Confusion. Helplessness. Depression. Anger.”
423. “it’s going to be tough, maybe even scary. But we’re ready for that. We’re collected and serious and aren’t going to be frightened off.”
424. “Strength is the ability to maintain a hold of oneself. It’s being the person who never gets mad, who cannot be rattled, because they are in control of their passions—rather than controlled by their passions.”
425. “Genius often really is just persistence in disguise.” – Ryan Holiday
426. “As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
427. “realized that the same drive and compulsion that had made me successful so early came with a price—as it had for so many others. It wasn’t so much the amount of work but the outsized role it had taken in my sense of self. I was trapped so terribly inside my own head that I was a prisoner to my own thoughts. The”
428. “Focusing on smaller, progressive parts of the work also eliminates the tendency to sit on your ass and dream indefinitely.”
429. “When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path.”
430. “You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better.”
431. “Courage has clear rewards. One takes a risk because they hope for a payoff—something others are afraid to reach for. But what about sacrificing oneself? Or sacrificing deeply for something? There’s courage and then there is heroism, the highest form of courage. The kind embodied in those who are willing to give, perhaps give everything, for someone else.”
432. “Philosophy's true use - "An operating system for life's difficulties and hardships".”
433. “Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds -- that sacred place of reason, action and will -- and throw off our compasses.”
434. “Art is the kind of marathon where you cross the finish line and instead of getting a medal placed around your neck, the volunteers roughly grab you by the shoulders and walk you over to the starting line of another marathon.”
435. “If you hold a perpetually negative outlook, soon enough everything you encounter will seem negative.”
436. “The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.”
437. “We are restless because deep in our hearts we know now that our happiness is found elsewhere, and our work, no matter how valuable it is to us or to others, cannot take its place. But we hurry on anyway, and attend to our business because we need to matter, and we don’t always realize we already do.”
438. “Attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously.”
439. “Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress. The same goes for verbalization. Even”
440. “We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself. Greatness of soul will be lost, which can’t stand out unless it disdains as petty what the mob regards as most desirable. —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS,”
441. “Stoicism teaches that we can’t control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our “reasoned choice”—our ability to use our reason to choose how we categorize, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events.”
442. “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 rawtalent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”
443. “the world can control our bodies—we can be thrown in jail or be tossed about by the weather. But the mind? That’s ours. We must protect it. Maintain control over your mind and perceptions, they’d say. It’s your most prized possession.”
444. “it’s about filtering the outside world through the straightener of our judgment. That’s what our reason can do—it can take the crooked, confusing, and overwhelming nature of external events and make them orderly.”
445. “There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.” — Ryan Holiday
446. “What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”
447. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” Ryan Holiday
448. “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU”
449. “People are getting a little desperate. People might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic.”
450. “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.”
451. “Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride.”
452. “The question to ask, when you feel pride is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see?” Ryan Holiday
453. “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.”
454. “The purpose of ritual isn’t to win the gods over to our side (though that can’t hurt!). It’s to settle our bodies (and our minds) down when Fortune is our opponent on the other side of the net.”
455. “There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events. -”
456. “Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder.”
457. “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.”
458. “Because though our doubts (and self-doubts) feel real, they have very little bearing on what is and isn't possible.”
459. “Our actions can be constrained, but our will can’t be. Our plans—even our bodies—can be broken. But belief in ourselves? No matter how many times we are thrown back, we alone retain the power to decide to go once more. Or to try another route. Or, at the very least, to accept this reality and decide upon a new aim.”
460. “Remember: even what we get for free has a cost, if only in what we pay to store it—in our garages and in our minds.”
461. “Frank Shamrock, pioneiro das artes marciais mistas (MMA) e várias vezes campeão, tem um sistema que usa para treinar lutadores e que chama de mais, menos, igual. Ele diz que, se quiser ser grande, cada lutador deve ter alguém melhor com quem aprender, alguém inferior a quem ensinar e alguém no mesmo patamar com quem se comparar.”
462. “There is always a countermove, always an escape or way through. No one said it would be easy and of course the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.”
463. “We are one big collective organism engaged in one endless project together. We are one.”
464. “To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line.”
465. “Failure shows us the way—by showing us what isn’t the way.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way
466. “Just don’t lie to yourself by conflating emoting about a problem and dealing with it. Because they are as different as sleeping and waking.”
467. “The good things in life cost what they cost. The unnecessary things are not worth it at any price. The key is being aware of the difference.”
468. “Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It’s an endless loop.”
469. “If we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.” Ryan Holiday
470. “The pivotal moment for Florence Nightingale was the realization that she was never going to be given what she knew she needed. She discovered, as she wrote in her journal, that she’d need to take it. She had to demand the life she wanted.”
471. “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.’ ”
472. “The same is true for you today. The order and the peace might be interrupted by a new circumstance. OK. Get a hold of yourself and find your way back.”
473. “An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before.”
474. “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.”
475. “As Chris Hedges, the philosopher and journalist, wrote, “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.”
476. “Will we fall short of our own standards? Yes. When this happens, we don’t need to whip ourselves, as Clamence did, we must simply let it instruct and teach us, as all injuries do.”
477. “As the Quaker William Penn observed, “Buildings that lie so exposed to the weather need a good foundation.”
478. “The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up. — CHUCK PALAHNIUK”
479. “Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values. Viktor Frankl”
480. “No one will argue that writing is an easy profession. Getting someone to pay you for your words isn’t easy. But there are strategies you can use to simplify the process and transform what you can produce.”
481. “The reality is that while the Internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively. Each member usually sees what he or she sees a single time—a snapshot of the process—and makes his or her conclusions from that.”
482. “Help your fellow humans thrive and survive, contribute your little bit to the universe before it swallows you up, and be happy with that. Lend a hand to others. Be strong for them, and it will make you stronger.”
483. “No one said life was easy. No one said it would be fair.”
484. “The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives—and the less free we are.”
485. “What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better. — WENDELL PHILLIPS”
486. “This is how obstacles become obstacles.”
487. “Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.”
488. “There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.”
489. “Courage is honest commitment to noble ideals. The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?”
490. “I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.”
491. “According to the Stoics, the circle of control contains just one thing: YOUR MIND. That’s right, even your physical body isn’t completely within the circle.”
492. “Media was once about protecting a name; on the web it is about building one.”
493. “There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.”
494. “Great entrepreneurs are never out of the game for long. They slip many times, but they don't fall.”
495. “My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep.”
496. “The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON”
497. “All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.”
498. “Certain things in life will cut you open like a knife. When that happens—at that exposing moment—the world gets a glimpse of what’s truly inside you. So what will be revealed when you’re sliced open by tension and pressure? Iron? Or air? Or bullshit?”
499. “What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him. —GOETHE”
500. “True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.” Ryan Holiday
501. “Outward appearances are deceptive. What’s within them, beneath them, is what matters.”
502. “The investor and serial entrepreneur Ben Horowitz put it more bluntly: “The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal.… The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.”
503. “Ego is more than just off-putting and obnoxious. Instead, it’s the sworn enemy of our ability to learn and grow.”
504. “Doing great work is a struggle. It's draining, it's demoralizing, it's frightening - not always, but it can feel that way when we're deep in the middle of it.”
505. “I was trapped so terribly inside my own head that I was a prisoner to my own thoughts. The”
506. “All growth is a leap in the dark. If you’re afraid of that, you’ll never do anything worthwhile.”
507. “When Your Life Is Solely and Exclusively About Yourself It’s Worse than Not Fun — It’s Empty and Awful.”
508. “See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way.”
509. “We choose how we’ll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can’t change the obstacles themselves—that part of the equation is set—but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear.”
510. “When fear is defined, it can be defeated.”
511. “Build a life you don’t need to escape from.”
512. “It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.”
513. “He was patient because he knew that difficult things took time.”
514. “This is why we can’t let externals determine whether something was worth it or not. It’s on us.”
515. “Our actions may be impeded ... but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.”
516. “Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.”
517. “Quem é capaz de pensar no longo prazo não sente pena de si mesmo durante os reveses de curto prazo. Aquele que valoriza a equipe pode dividir o crédito e refrear os próprios interesses de um modo que a maioria não consegue.”
518. “you must reclaim the ability to abstain because within it is your clarity and self-control.”
519. “Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control.”
520. “True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.”
521. “attention is a habit, and that letting your attention slip and wander builds bad habits and enables mistakes.”
522. “Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds—that sacred place of reason, action and will—and throw off our compass.”
523. “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.”
524. “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.”
525. “With accomplishment comes a growing pressure to pretend that we know more than we do. To pretend we already know everything.”
526. “How To Stay Calm While Everyone Else Freaks Out:
527. “Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree.”
528. “Great times are great softeners”
529. “Be present. And if you’ve had trouble with this in the past? That’s okay. That’s the nice thing about the present. It keeps showing up to give you a second chance.”
530. “it’s really just taking action—whether that’s approaching someone you’re intimidated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn.”
531. “Welcome to the source of most of our problems down here on Earth. Everything is planned down to the letter, then something goes wrong and the first thing we do is trade in our plan for a good ol’ emotional freak-out. Some of us almost crave sounding the alarm, because it’s easier than dealing with whatever is staring us in the face.”
532. “The need for progress can be the enemy of enjoying the process.”
533. “It’s a temptation that exists for everyone – for talk and hype to replace action.”
534. “Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can’t actually influence is wasted—self-indulgent and self-destructive.”
535. “The more time kids spend online, studies show, the worse their grades are. According to Nielson, active social networkers are 26 percent more likely to give their opinion on politics and current events off-line, even though they are exactly the people whose opinions should matter the least.”