Quotes by Ryan Holiday

The combination of power, fear, and mania can be deadly. The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first. Afraid that hes not well liked, he works so hard to get others to like him that it has the opposite effect. Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement. And on and on - the things we fear or dread, we blindly inflict on ourselves.

Let others slap each others on the back while youre back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement.

Doing great work is a struggle. Its draining, its demoralizing, its frightening - not always, but it can feel that way when were deep in the middle of it.

When you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.

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 doesnt make you a bad person to want to be remembered. To want to make it to the top. To provide for yourself and your family. After all, thats all part of the allure. There is a balance. Soccer coach Tony Adams expresses it well. Play for the name on the front of the jersey, he says, and theyll remember the name on the back.

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 Im done, when I die and nature tears me up...

What is known cant jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit.

This is a fundamental irony of most people’s lives. They don’t quite know what they want to do with their lives. Yet they are very active.

You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better.

Not me,” you think.

There is another apt Latin expression: Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship is better than the material.) The material weve been given genetically, emotionally, financially, thats where we begin. We dont control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it.

You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and 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.

When attempting to turn things around for a particularly disliked or controversial client, Sitrick was fond of saying, We need to find a lead steer! The media, like any group of animals, gallops in a herd. It takes just one steer to start a stampede.

Publishers and advertisers cant differentiate between the types of impressions an ad does on a site. A perusing reader is no better than an accidental reader. An article that provides worthwhile advice is no more valuable than one instantly forgotten. So long as the page loads and the ads are seen, both sides are fulfilling their purpose. A click is a click.

Publicity does not come easily, profits do not come easily, and knowledge does not come easily.

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

Blogs are assailed on all sides, by the crushing economics of the business, dishonest sources, inhuman deadlines, pageview quotas, inaccurate information, greedy publishers, poor training, the demands of the audience, and so much more. These incentives are real, whether youre at The Huffington Post or some tiny blog. Taken individually, the resulting output is obvious: bad stories, incomplete stories, wrong stories, unimportant stories.

We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. It’s far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won’t be impressed. We can’t let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: ‘peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.’ With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It’s on us.

We all have goals: We want to matter. We want to be important. We want to have freedom and power to pursue our creative work. We want respect from our peers and recognition for our accomplishments. Not out of vanity or selfishness, but of an earnest desire to fulfill our personal potential.