Ryan Holiday Quotes

People say, "John, what's your personal growth?" And ask "How do you grow?" And I tell them. I thought, "Why do I keep telling them, why don't I just write a book on what I call personal growth?" And that's what this [Today Matters] book is.

You can't be successful with other people if you haven't paid the price of success with yourself.

In order to help people, you have to first learn how to help yourself.

You can't really help people until you've helped yourself first.

I write about my life and the lives of people around me and situations, and the idea's for each record to try to make you a better person, to understand the life that you lead more.

The important thing is that you've got a strong foundation before you start to try to save the world or help other people.

The young people have a phrase for this now, which is "slay in your lane." That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.

It's a practice for me every day, sometimes every hour of every day. It is an absolute practice. When I went into the research, I really thought that there are authentic people and inauthentic people, period. What I found is, there people who practice authenticity and people who don't. The people who practice authenticity work their ass off at it.

If your outer life is really a reflection of the quality of your inner life, then it's a brilliant move to spend at least an hour a day working on yourself.

I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can.

I think it's important for people like me to evaluate and reevaluate.

To the one, a little natural moderation and quietness of temper may be sufficient to conduct us: but to the other, we can only attain by much discipline and slow advances; and when we think we have made great way, we shall often find reason to confess in the hour of trial, that we had greatly, far too greatly, over-rated our progress.

To attract attractive people, you must be attractive. To attract powerful people, you must be powerful. To attract committed people, you must be committed. Instead of going to work on them, you go to work on yourself. If you become, you can attract.

A person's strength is to know their weaknesses.

Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.

Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

The most common mistake you'll make is forgetting to keep your own scorecard. Very little at work reinforces your ability to do this, so you will have to be vigilant. When evaluators give you an assessment, they are just guessing at who you are; they certainly are not the ones who know your potential. They can rate you and influence you, but they don't get to define you. That's your most honorable assignment: to define, every day through the way you deliver your work, the scope and nature of your inherent abilities.

No, what I am doing is kind by telling people who are useless, "Do something that you're good at".

You do not need to be different from who you are. You only need to be more of the person you already are.

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.

When you’re training Parkour with passion, if you’re good, people will notice you. Don’t go around saying, ‘Hey look at this new move I got.’ No. We used to say, ‘If it’s good we’ll tell you.’ Do it for yourself first.

You can't change people, but most importantly, unless you're their momma, you don't even know what's best for them.

When people feel that they have failed, it's usually because somebody or something caused them to feel that way and taste defeat. I refuse to dwell on that. Yes, it sucks at first, and the feeling is valid, but it all happens for a reason.