Ryan Holiday

Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.

Being criticized in the media is a good problem to have - most of the time. It means you're doing something that is at least interesting or cool or crazy enough to be noticed. It might not always feel good, but it's usually better than the alternative of obscurity.

The idea that only the swaggering, all-knowing, and ruthlessly ambitious succeed is a lie. One that has discouraged so many people with so much potential - and worse, encouraged many more to crash and burn.

Virality, at its core, is asking someone to spend their social capital recommending or linking or posting about you for free.

Ordinary people shy away form negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune - really anything, everything - to their advantage.

There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

Virality is not an accident. It is engineered. And that's why growth hackers beat traditional marketers.

The news as entertainment is the real danger, because the truth or accuracy of what it is reporting becomes irrelevant.

The greats - they protect their sleep because it's where the best work comes from. They say no to things. They turn in when they hit their limits. They don't let the creep of sleep deprivation undermine their judgment.

The essential idea of Stoicism in my interpretation is, you don't control the world around you, you control how you respond. At 19, that's very empowering.

We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.

We all have goals: We want to matter. We want to be important. We want to have freedom and power to pursue our creative work. We want respect from our peers and recognition for our accomplishments. Not out of vanity or selfishness, but of an earnest desire to fulfill our personal potential.

There has to be something about your business that gets you excited. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have spent your precious - irreplaceable - time on it.

True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.

The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.

I run 5 miles every night. It’s where I go to digest my day, hash out the multitude of information that’s been poured into me in the last wild six months or so, and to try and condense it down to some sort of cohesive strategy to live my life by.