Ryan Holiday

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?”

“When faced with people’s bad behavior, turn around and ask when you have acted like that.”

“You ought to be preparing yourself…to hear truths, which no inflexibility will be able to withstand,” James Madison once wrote to Thomas Jefferson.

“Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”

“Why did you say that? Was it because it needed to be said, or because you just wanted to be part of the conversation?”

Today, I am 28. Officially, late twenties. Now, what?

Who do you spend time with? How do they make you who you are?

While you’re in college, it feels like the most important thing in the world. As soon as you leave college, it’s almost as if it never happened. No one asks about it, no one cares what classes you took or grades you got. They care about what you bring to the table–that’s it.

Find solace in self-control, rather than some brief satisfaction in abandoning it.

Some of them are classics, some are pop-favorites but I think all are very good. If you don’t read a lot of fiction, these books are a good place to start.

“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

When you buy food at a counter or window and there’s a line, leave as soon as you’ve paid. Don’t organize your things, don’t chat with the cashier, don’t talk to your friend, leave. You’re not ‘taking your time’ you’re “taking time from other people.”

So what if your friend is making a ton of money, or if they just got a ton of coverage for something they did? So what if they’re working with this client or that client? Or if they just signed a deal with so and so? You’ve made your purpose clear, you’ve made your life’s priorities clear. Things will work out for you in the way that you’ve chosen–but again, only if examined in their own context.