Ryan Holiday Quotes & Sayings

June 16th NO SHAME IN NEEDING HELP "Don't be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can't climb up without another soldier's help?" - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.7 No one ever said you were born with all the tools you'd need to solve every problem you'd face in life. In fact, as a newborn you were practically helpless. Someone helped you then, and you came to understand that you could ask for that help. It was how you knew you were loved. Well, you are still loved. You can ask anyone for help. You don't have to face everything on your own. If you need help, comrade, just ask. — Ryan Holiday

What is known can't jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Amazon, for its part, has a couple of other easy suggestions for you if the advice "write a hypothetical press release" doesn't quite work for your situation. Their CTO, Werner Vogels, suggests trying to write an FAQ for this product you're developing. (That way you can address, in advance, potential user issues and questions.)9 Or try to define the crucial parts of the user experience by making mockups of pages, writing hypothetical case studies so you can actually start to see what it would look like and who it would work for and how. Finally, try writing the user manual, which as Werner explains usually has three parts: concepts, how-to, and reference. (Defining these means you understand your idea in and out from the customers perspective. Also, he says, if you have more than one type of user then write multiple manuals.) — Ryan Holiday

If action is what we do when we still have some agency over our situation, the will is what we depend on when agency has all but disappeared. — Ryan Holiday

understand the range of potential outcomes and know that they are not all good — Ryan Holiday

Before he became the most brilliant and famous man in the ad business, David Ogilvy sold ovens door-to-door. Because of that, he never forgot that advertising is just a slightly more scalable form of creating demand than door-to-door sales. — Ryan Holiday

Especially when the leaders in your supposed community make it clear that that is exactly how they feel about you when it comes down to the crunch. But no, ignore that. It is in this moment that we must show the true strength of will within us. A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have: — Ryan Holiday

Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. — Ryan Holiday

Right thing is usually clear and intuitive enough to feel in our gut. — Ryan Holiday

Don't just want fuel. You need it. You can't go — Ryan Holiday

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

The Blitzkrieg strategy was designed to exploit the flinch of the enemy - he must collapse at the sight of what appears to be overwhelming force. Its success depends completely on this response. This military strategy works because the set-upon troops see the offensive force as an enormous obstacle bearing down on them. This — Ryan Holiday

Media was once about protecting a name; on the web it is about building one. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Whereas marketing was once brand-based, with growth hacking it becomes metric and ROI driven. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Dollar for dollar there is no better investment in the world than a book — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Great entrepreneurs are never out of the game for long. They slip many times, but they don't fall. — Ryan Holiday

Placed in some situation that seems unchangeable and undeniably negative, we can turn it into a learning experience, a humbling experience, a chance to provide comfort to others. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Each would collapse beneath the process. We've just wrongly assumed that it has to happen all at once, and we give up at the thought of it. We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y. We — Ryan Holiday

Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever. — Ryan Holiday

In this case, it's half strategy, half engineering. The combination is going to be different in every situation, but the point is that it's always outside-the-box, even outside-the-budget. Today, as a marketer, our task isn't necessarily to "build a brand" or even to maintain a preexisting one. We're better off building an army of immensely loyal and passionate users. Which is easier to track, define, and grow? Which of these is real, and which is simply an idea? And when you get that right - a brand will come naturally. — Ryan Holiday

We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information? — Ryan Holiday

In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. — Ryan Holiday

All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.6 — Ryan Holiday

The company's most effective marketing tactic (besides making a great product) would never have been conceived or attempted by a pure marketing team. Instead, the engineers coded a set of tools that made it possible for every member to seamlessly cross-post his or her Airbnb listing on craigslist (because craigslist does not technically "allow" this, it was a fairly ingenious work-around). As a result, Airbnb - a tiny site - suddenly had free distribution on one of the most popular websites in the world. — Ryan Holiday

Conning the conmen is one of life's most satisfying pleasures. — Ryan Holiday

For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations - because he could see while others could not. This insight lives on today in Warren Buffet's famous adage to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." Rockefeller, like all great investors, could resist impulse in favor of cold, hard common sense. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

I run 5 miles every night. It's where I go to digest my day, hash out the multitude of information that's been poured into me in the last wild six months or so, and to try and condense it down to some sort of cohesive strategy to live my life by. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the weather kept everyone else indoors. Work is pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes. It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting. Because there is work to be done. Work doesn't want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind. — Ryan Holiday

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.
- Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

The link economy encourages bloggers to repeat what "other people are saying" and link to it instead of doing their own reporting and standing behind it. This changes the news from what has happened into what someone said the news is. — Ryan Holiday

Great individuals find a way to transform weakness into strength. It's a rather amazing and even touching feat. They took what should have held them back - what in fact might be holding you back right this very second - and used it to move forward. As it turns out, this is one thing all great men and women of history have in common. Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles became fuel for the blaze that was their ambition. Nothing could stop them, they were (and continue to be) impossible to discourage or contain. Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity. These were people who flipped their obstacles upside down. Who lived the words of Marcus Aurelius and followed a group which Cicero called the only "real philosophers" - the ancient Stoics - even if they'd never read them. They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control. — Ryan Holiday

In the pay-per-pageview model, every post is a conflict of interest. — Ryan Holiday

An employee in your company makes a careless mistake that costs you business. This can be exactly what you spend so much time and effort trying to avoid. Or, with a shift in perception, it can be exactly what you were looking for - the chance to pierce through defenses and teach a lesson that can be learned only by experience. A mistake becomes training. — Ryan Holiday

In Workaholics Anonymous, one the exercises involves a simple reminder. We must, they say, "catch ourselves before we relapse into ego and self-will." That is: Rest before you get tired. Check your impulses before they take over. Avoid the idiot lights - stop before there is a problem. — Ryan Holiday

Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave. — Ryan Holiday

No slavery is more disgraceful," he quipped, "than one which is self-imposed. — Ryan Holiday

The implications of our obstacle are theoretical
they exist in the past and the future. We live in the moment. And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move. You can take the trouble you're dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment. To ignore the totality of your situation and learn to be content with what happens, as it happens. To have no "way" that the future needs to be to confirm your predictions, because you didn't make any. To let each new moment be a refresh wiping clear what came before and what others were hoping would come next. — Ryan Holiday

Richard Branson likes to say, is that "business opportunities are like buses; there's always another coming around. — Ryan Holiday

The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. — Ryan Holiday

Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. — Ryan Holiday

sometimes being superficial - taking things only at first glance - is the most profound approach. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

To borrow from Budd Schulberg's description of a media manipulator in his classic novel The Harder They Fall, I was "indulging myself in the illusions that we can deal in filth without becoming the thing we touch." I no longer have those illusions. Winston Churchill wrote of the appeasers of his age that "each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last." I was even more delusional. I thought I could skip being devoured entirely. It would never turn on me. I was in control. I was the expert. But I was wrong. — Ryan Holiday

Exert only calculated force where it will be effective, rather than straining and struggling with pointless attrition tactics. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself. - AARON GINN — Ryan Holiday

Too many people think that great victories like Grant's and Edison's came from a flash of insight. That they cracked the problem with pure genius. In fact, it was the slow pressure, repeated from many different angles, the elimination of so many other more promising options, that slowly and surely churned the solution to the top of the pile. Their genius was unity of purpose, deafness to doubt, and the desire to stay at it. — Ryan Holiday

Never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short — Ryan Holiday

Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them? — Ryan Holiday

Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of "How do I get customers for my product?" and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. . . . — Ryan Holiday

It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows," Epictetus says. — Ryan Holiday

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. — Ryan Holiday

If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it's what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can't ever cry. Forget "manliness." If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one's emotions, not in pretending they don't exist. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

If someone we knew took traffic signals personally, we would judge them insane. Yet — Ryan Holiday

For some reason, these days we tend to downplay the importance of aggression, of taking risks, of barreling forward. It's probably because it's been negatively associated with certain notions of violence or masculinity. But of course Earhart shows that that isn't true. In fact, on the side of her plane she painted the words, "Always think with your stick forward." That is: You can't ever let up your flying speed - if you do, you crash. — Ryan Holiday

Persist and resist". Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. - Epictetus — Ryan Holiday

At twenty-one, Richard Wright was not the world-famous author he would eventually be. But poor and black, he decided he would read and no one could stop him. Did he storm the library and make a scene? No, not in the Jim Crow South he didn't. Instead, he forged a note that said, "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?" (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else. With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy. To thumb your nose at the authorities and say: What? This is not a bridge. I don't know what you're talking about. Or, in some cases, giving the middle finger to the people trying to hold you down and blowing right through their evil, disgusting rules. Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. — Ryan Holiday

It's a huge step forward to realize that the worst thing to happen is never the event, but the event and losing your head. Because then you'll have two problems (one of them unnecessary and post hoc). The — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

Be realistic we're told. Listen to feedback. Play well with others. Compromise. Well, what if the "other" party is wrong? What if conventional wisdom is too conservative? It's this all-too-common impulse to complain, defer, and then give up that holds us back. — Ryan Holiday

The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger. — Ryan Holiday

The greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void — Ryan Holiday

Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving. — Ryan Holiday

Publicity does not come easily, profits do not come easily, and knowledge does not come easily. — Ryan Holiday

According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it's not about beating the other guy. It's not about having more than the others. It's about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It's about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you're capable of in what you choose. That's it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means "tranquillity" in English.) It's — Ryan Holiday

The struggle against an obstacle inevitably propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity. The enemy is any perception that prevents us from seeing this. — Ryan Holiday

Snark functions as a device to punish human spontaneity, eccentricity, nonconformity, and simple error. Everyone is being snarked into line, — Ryan Holiday

False ideas about yourself destroy you. For — Ryan Holiday

Let others slap each others on the back while you're back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement. — Ryan Holiday

Freedom? That's easy. It's in your choices. Happiness? That's easy. It's in your choices. Respect of your peers? That too is in the choices you make. — Ryan Holiday

Their lifestyle is the result of prioritizing. — Ryan Holiday

It's three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will. — Ryan Holiday

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 of ideas. Well, the same logic applies. Turn it around. Find some benefit. Use it as fuel. — Ryan Holiday

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

great failing is "to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth." A — Ryan Holiday

director of growth at StumbleUpon, put it best: growth hacking is more of a mindset than a tool kit. — Ryan Holiday

Every obstacle is unique to each of us. But the responses they elicit are the same: Fear. Frustration. Confusion. Helplessness. Depression. Anger. — Ryan Holiday

he was willing to risk great personal harm and expend massive amounts of energy to develop that hardiness. You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is - at best - indifferent to your existence. Whether we were born weak like Roosevelt — Ryan Holiday

At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up... — Ryan Holiday

Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn't matter. How much easier would it be for you to know what to do? How much more quickly and dispassionately could you size up the scenario and its options? You could write it off, greet it calmly. — Ryan Holiday

Coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder ... — Ryan Holiday

You're not as good as you think. You don't have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Ryan Holiday

you must reclaim the ability to abstain because within it is your clarity and self-control. — Ryan Holiday

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

Every negative has a positive. Push a negative hard enough and deep enough that it will break through into its counterside. — Ryan Holiday