Latest Quotes

“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 i…”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Humble in our aspirations. Gracious in our success. Resilient in our failures.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“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, Ego Is the Enemy

“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, Ego Is the Enemy

“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, Ego Is the Enemy

“The bigger the ego the harder the fall.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Pick up a book on a topic you know next to nothing about. Put yourself in rooms where you’re the least knowledgeable person. That uncomfortable feeling, that defensiveness that you feel when your most deeply held assumptions are challenged— what about subjecting yourself to it deliberately? Change y…”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.”

— Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“By conventional terms, I’m lazy. You’re thinking it, I said it. Guilty as charged. But despite all this, I’ve somehow managed to start a group of companies with over 200 employees and invested in more than 30 other companies along the way. All this from someone who rarely gets out of bed before noon…”

— Andrew Wilkinson, Lazy Leadership — The Modern Team

“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.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Sometimes because we can’t face what’s been said or what’s been done, we do the unthinkable in response to the unbearable: we escalate. This is ego in its purest and most toxic form.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Every time you sit down to work, remind yourself: I am delaying gratification by doing this. I am passing the marshmallow test. I am earning what my ambition burns for. I am making an investment in myself instead of in my ego. Give yourself a little credit for this choice, but not so much, because y…”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes— but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself…”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“One must ask: if your belief in yourself is not dependent on actual achievement, then what is it dependent on? The answer, too often when we are just setting out, is nothing. Ego. And this is why we so often see precipitous rises followed by calamitous falls.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety. We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything.”

— Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“But the question that you have to ask is: Is video the end of the line, right? Is that as good as we can do, in terms of capturing a scene and what someone is experiencing at that point in time? And I think that the answer to that is definitely no, right? Because technology can always get better, we…”

— Mark Zuckerberg, Here are Mark Zuckerberg’s full remarks about how much he’d like to (literally!) read your thoughts

“I'm also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is.”

— Mark Zuckerberg, Q&A — June 30, 2015