Ryan Holiday

Everything sucks. I know it. You know it. Let that free you.

If confidence is knowing your strength, humility is an awareness of one’s own weaknesses.

The existence of death need not be depressing. Because it’s actually invigorating.

Those two pieces of advice have shaped my career as a writer and a producer of books for other people.

As a creator, you need to actively bake the marketing into your product.

There are way too many terrible business books out there. Most business books aren’t even books—they are business cards for the writers or ego trips for CEOs.

This year I thought I might reflect on how to get to this place, how to live and approach life so that at 30, you can honestly feel like you’ve left nothing on the table.

It’s an incremental, iterative journey. You don’t magically arrive. Ever. You just strive to get closer.

It’s not a way to live. It’s not a way to do big things. It’s a way to fail big.

Nobody grows by flattery. No one benefits from chasing down a flawed dream they are not suited for or can’t properly defend.

Reading is like eating, sex and meditation. The whole point is that it’s pleasurable and meaningful. It’s like listening to music. You’re not supposed to rush through it.

Not everything that’s hard is good of course, but almost everything good is very hard.

Don’t worry as much about disruption and chaos—it might simply mean interesting things are happening—fear stability and complacency because it means decay.

Today, in a society obsessed with content, outrage, and drama, it’s even easier to get lost in the echo chamber of the debate of what’s “better.”

Life is full of things that, technically speaking, we are able to do, but that reasonable, considerate people refrain from doing—because it negatively impacts the other people around us.

“Powerful people,” he writes, “impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.” I think of this law when I am about to tweet, when I am considering an email, when I am coming up with marketing materials. Less is almost always more.

Even if they are serious opportunities, even if it will only take 15 minutes, even if it’s something that everyone else does, I’d like to avoid it.

Be inspired by the people who truly changed the world for the better, and learn lessons from the writers and thinkers who have deeply studied the topics and personalities and problems of the past.