Ryan Holiday

Because guessing and hoping and trying to get lucky are dumb.

There are fundamentally two types of people in this world: 1) People who think they are entitled to other people’s time and 2) decent, civilized human beings.

And that’s how you find yourself in places you don’t want to be, stuck doing stuff you don’t want to do, frustrated and resentful, overloaded and impatient, distracted and confused.

There are well-researched stories of dogs who died of broken hearts, elephants with grudges, dolphins who commit suicide, and other oddities that make you think and say “Wow.”

The obstacles and adversity we face in life are not to be avoided but embraced.

“Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”

These are books that might just take a few hours or even minutes to read—but will stay with you far longer than that.

One way to get more deep work done is to cultivate a disinterest with the trivial things that other people get distracted by (hint: watching debates/political maneuvering a year before an election).

I used to go around and ask every smart person I met—even emailing important people I didn’t know— “What books do you recommend to a kid like me?”

There’s something for you. It’s right around you.

It takes a somewhat deranged type of person to sit down and read a thousand pages of something just for the fun of it.

No wonder we are stressed. No wonder we are so busy.

Like every kid, I was forced to read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.

Don’t travel.

No sober person has ever walked into a nightclub and said: “I like this. Let’s spend more time in places like this.”

Everything you see on HGTV is wrong and dangerous.

There is a French saying popular with revolutionaries: On s’engage et puis on voit. “One jumps into the fray and then figures it out.”

Ask yourself, “Who is making more noise, me or the babies on the flight?”