Ryan Holiday
American author of The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and Stillness Is the Key. Writes the Reading List book-recommendation email (started 2008) and owns The Painted Porch bookstore in Bastrop, Texas. Hosts The Daily Stoic podcast.
Ryan Holiday did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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There is nothing wrong with building something large, as long as that is genuinely what someone set out to do.
It is fine if you want to be a Chipotle. There's nothing wrong with building something large if that's genuinely what you set out to do.
ryanholiday.netSaid 28 Aug 2026This on korrents
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The right book encountered at the right time can change the whole course of a person's life.
The right book at the right time is a powerful thing. In fact, it can change the whole course of your life.
ryanholiday.netSaid 20 Aug 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
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- PodcastThe Top 10 Most Popular Passages From The Daily Stoic
17 October
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- PodcastWhy Grit Isn’t Enough | Angela Duckworth
16 October
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28 August
From one piece The Discipline Required To Create The Life You Want 4 beliefs · ryanholiday.net
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Their words
It takes discipline. The discipline to figure out what you actually want your life to look like. The discipline to turn down cool, lucrative opportunities.
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Their words
There are plenty of billionaires who don't have it, plenty of ordinary people who have never lost it. So it doesn't take some enormous amount of money.
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Their words
But in my experience, most people actually don't really think at all about what they're setting out to do. They don't sit down and consider what success would look like for them, what "enough" would feel like, what winning their particular game would mean.
+ 1 more
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korrents.com
There is nothing wrong with building something large, as long as that is genuinely what someone set out to do.Their words
It is fine if you want to be a Chipotle. There's nothing wrong with building something large if that's genuinely what you set out to do.
20 August
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korrents.com
The right book encountered at the right time can change the whole course of a person's life.Their words
The right book at the right time is a powerful thing. In fact, it can change the whole course of your life.
6 August
From one piece This Is Why We Opened A Banned Books Library (In Rural Texas) 3 beliefs · ryanholiday.net
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korrents.com
People often support banning a book based on assumptions about its content rather than on having read it themselves.Their words
People are willing to ban a book because of what they think might be in it, or because of what someone else said was in it.
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Their words
America is, and always has been, in less danger of top-down Chinese- or Soviet-style suppression and much more vulnerable to short-sighted or even well-intentioned democratic censorship.
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korrents.com
Including a book in a library's collection, or reading it, is not the same as endorsing everything in it.Their words
A library is not an endorsement of every book inside it. Reading something is not the same as agreeing with it.
17 July
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 13 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
There is nothing wrong with building something large, as long as that is genuinely what someone set out to do.
It is fine if you want to be a Chipotle. There's nothing wrong with building something large if that's genuinely what you set out to do.
The Discipline Required To Create The Life You Want Said 28 Aug 2026
Most people never sit down to decide what success or "enough" would look like for them, and so end up chasing growth indiscriminately.
But in my experience, most people actually don't really think at all about what they're setting out to do. They don't sit down and consider what success would look like for them, what "enough" would feel like, what winning their particular game would mean.
The Discipline Required To Create The Life You Want Said 28 Aug 2026
Contentment with what one has does not require great wealth — some billionaires lack it while many ordinary people never lose it.
There are plenty of billionaires who don't have it, plenty of ordinary people who have never lost it. So it doesn't take some enormous amount of money.
The Discipline Required To Create The Life You Want Said 28 Aug 2026
Show 10 more
Building the life you actually want takes discipline: to work out what you want, and to turn down cool, lucrative opportunities.
It takes discipline. The discipline to figure out what you actually want your life to look like. The discipline to turn down cool, lucrative opportunities.
The Discipline Required To Create The Life You Want Said 28 Aug 2026
The right book encountered at the right time can change the whole course of a person's life.
The right book at the right time is a powerful thing. In fact, it can change the whole course of your life.
For Nearly 2,000 Years, This Is Who People Have Turned To When Life Gets Hard Said 20 Aug 2026
Including a book in a library's collection, or reading it, is not the same as endorsing everything in it.
A library is not an endorsement of every book inside it. Reading something is not the same as agreeing with it.
This Is Why We Opened A Banned Books Library (In Rural Texas) Said 6 Aug 2026
Democracies like America are more vulnerable to well-intentioned, bottom-up censorship than to top-down authoritarian suppression.
America is, and always has been, in less danger of top-down Chinese- or Soviet-style suppression and much more vulnerable to short-sighted or even well-intentioned democratic censorship.
This Is Why We Opened A Banned Books Library (In Rural Texas) Said 6 Aug 2026
People often support banning a book based on assumptions about its content rather than on having read it themselves.
People are willing to ban a book because of what they think might be in it, or because of what someone else said was in it.
This Is Why We Opened A Banned Books Library (In Rural Texas) Said 6 Aug 2026
There are no tricks to pushing through fear: you cannot read or think your way to it, only do the thing, again and again.
There are unfortunately no tricks to cultivating this ability. You can’t read your way to it. You can’t think your way to it. You just gotta do it. You make the pitch. You get up on the stage. You deliver the pre-game speech. You give the toast. And then you do it again and again.
This Is Something You Have To Get Good At Said 4 Jun 2026
Getting up in front of people gets less scary the more you do it, because confidence is built by competence.
It is scary to get up there. But it gets less scary the more you do it. Confidence is built by competence, there’s no way around it.
This Is Something You Have To Get Good At Said 4 Jun 2026
Learning to think by writing is slow, tedious, difficult work that takes discipline and patience.
This is slow, tedious, difficult work. It takes discipline and patience. The hours and hours of sitting with frustration and confusion.
This Is The Most Important Skill You Can Have In Life Said 7 May 2026
A book you want is always worth buying: never let time or money stop you from having it
I promised myself a long time ago that if I saw a book that interested me I’d never let time or money or anything else prevent me from having it. This means that I treat reading with a certain amount of respect.
The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2023 Said 12 Jan 2024
The better you get at a craft, the humbler it makes you.
When you are pursuing a craft you realize that the better you get, the humbler you are.
25 Ways To Kill The Toxic Ego That Will Ruin Your Life Said 4 May 2018
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 11 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Liked The Greek Way
Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way is a wonderful discussion of what made the Greeks so special, what they can teach us and how they thought about life.
ryanholiday.net 12 Jan 2024
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Recommends The Past That Would Not Die
by Walter Lord is a riveting, must read narrative nonfiction thriller about James Meredith’s brave and bold campaign to integrate Ole Miss in 1962.
ryanholiday.net 12 Jan 2024
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Liked The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Von Drehle. It’s a short, great read.
ryanholiday.net 12 Jan 2024
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Show 8 more
Recommends Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
I just interviewed Dr. Becky too but I don’t think it will come out until January. Stay tuned and in the meantime, you just HAVE to read this book
ryanholiday.net 12 Jan 2024
affiliate link
What others say about Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be →
Loved Pontius Pilate
Ann Wroe’s biography of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea–the man who sentenced Jesus to his gruesome death–was so overwhelmingly good that I could only read a couple pages at a time.
ryanholiday.net 12 Jan 2024
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Recommends American Rust
Recommends The Son
I say that The Son is on par with the show Yellowstone, but better.
ryanholiday.net 12 Jan 2024
affiliate link
Recommends Hiya
The Reading List email is sponsored by Hiya , the pediatrician-approved superpowered chewable vitamin created by two dads tired of children’s vitamins that cause more problems than they solve.
ryanholiday.net 10 Dec 2022
sponsored
Loved Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature
It’s about encouraging curiosity and interest, and cultivating resiliency and self-sufficiency.
ryanholiday.net 10 Dec 2022
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Loved The War of Art
Before I start any book project, I take a few hours and re-read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, maybe the greatest book ever written on the creative process.
ryanholiday.net 10 Dec 2022
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Loved Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
this one is one of the best leadership books I have ever read
ryanholiday.net 10 Dec 2022
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What others say about Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman →
Where they publish
Site ryanholiday.net Holiday's personal site: blog, archive, best-articles and the Reading List signup.
Recent
- 10 Lessons It Took Me 10 Years To Understand 7 Oct 2026 I’d put in my hours. 482 weeks. 3,379 days. That’s how long I’d been studying the Stoics when I sat down to write the Daily Stoic. I was 29 years old and I knew enough to write a couple-hundred-page book, one Stoic entr…
- Why I Ran A 50K Through Rome Alone (And What It Taught Me) 29 Sept 2026 In the middle of Rome, there stands one of the great trophies of history, the Column of Marcus Aurelius. The nearly 100-foot monument was put up to commemorate Marcus’ victories during the Marcomannic Wars. It is covere…
- This Won’t Solve All Your Problems (Just Most of Them) 3 Sept 2026 In March 2025, we found two ten-week old puppies dumped on the road near where we live out in the country. One was white with spots. The other was mostly black with some white on her chest and paws. Both were emaciated,…
Show 4 more
- The Discipline Required To Create The Life You Want 28 Aug 2026 You know, not everything has to be big. I realize that the impulse, especially when it comes to business, is to try to grow everything to the absolute biggest it can be. This is not a new, but it’s certainly a defining…
- For Nearly 2,000 Years, This Is Who People Have Turned To When Life Gets Hard 20 Aug 2026 The right book at the right time is a powerful thing. In fact, it can change the whole course of your life. Some time around the year 141 CE, the philosopher Junius Rusticus gave a young Marcus Aurelius a book from his…
- This Is Why We Opened A Banned Books Library (In Rural Texas) 6 Aug 2026 One of my kids’ favorite books is I Need a New Butt. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but he needs a new butt not for any culture-war reason but because his has a crack in it. That’s funny, especially if you’re four or f…
- The 16 Perfectly Reachable Habits That Made Me Who I Am 17 Jul 2026 For 2,130 consecutive games, Lou Gehrig played first base for the New York Yankees—a streak that would stand for five and a half decades. He put up a career .340 batting average. He was a two-time MVP, seven-time All-St…
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Newsletter The Reading List Monthly book-recommendation email Holiday has sent since 2008; the page is on his own domain.
Link verified 4 Sept 2026.
x.com @ryanholiday Holiday's X account, linked from his own site.
Recent
- Why Failure is a Statistical Certainty—and Why That’s Okay 18 Oct 2026
- If you think there is nothing anyone can teach you, you are not just insufferable - you’re right. You will not learn anything, except the looming and painful lesson of failure. 18 Oct 2026
- The Untold Story of a Slave in the White House With Morning Joe 17 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- You have to get practice doing the thing. Not once but hundreds and hundreds of times. Get your hours. Get stronger, smarter, wiser with each turn. 17 Oct 2026
- 5 Books That Are Better Than an MBA 16 Oct 2026
- These are books to help you manage your time so you can spend more time petting dogs. 16 Oct 2026
- No matter how successful we get, nor how much easier it would be to rest on our laurels. Even when we have everything. Even when we achieve wisdom and perspective. Nothing exempts us from hard work. Nothing gives us a pass on our duty. 16 Oct 2026
- You Always Want To Do More 15 Oct 2026
- It only takes one person who believes in you. 15 Oct 2026
- It could happen to you... Seneca was exiled... Musonius Rufus was exiled four times... James Stockdale was shot down... Marcus Aurelius was suddenly made emperor... Anything can happen. A Stoic is prepared. 15 Oct 2026
- Why Your Vote Matters More Than You Think 14 Oct 2026
- This is embarrassing and needs to stop. If you want to send us your favorite banned books, send to: ATTN: Banned Books 912 Main St. Bastrop, Tx 78602 United States 14 Oct 2026
- We Have Entered A New Gilded Age, This Is Why | Nathaniel Philbrick @natphilbrick | Watch the Full Video Here 14 Oct 2026
- 6 tips on how to start journaling: - Start Small - Track Something In Your Journal - Use Your Journal To Prepare In the Morning - Use Your Journal To Review Your Day In The Evening - Copy Down Important Quotes In Your Journal - Brainstorm Ideas In Your Journal 14 Oct 2026
- Why Great Readers Quit Books 13 Oct 2026
- One of the things that separates us from other people is our ability to be strict and self-disciplined. Where other people are fine making excuses or taking shortcuts, we are not. Where other people wing it or do what’s easiest, taking the path of least resistance, we don’t. 13 Oct 2026
- Why Saying No Is a Superpower 12 Oct 2026
- We Have Entered A New Gilded Age, This Is Why With Nathaniel Philbrick @natphilbrick | Watch the Full Video Here 12 Oct 2026
- The 5 Virtues of Good Leadership: 1. Courage 2. Temperance 3. Dignity 4. Humility 5. Wisdom 12 Oct 2026
- This is Our Chance 11 Oct 2026
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Podcast The Daily Stoic Hosts The Daily Stoic podcast.
Recent
- This is How You Die Before Your Time 19 Oct 2026
- The Top 10 Most Popular Passages From The Daily Stoic 18 Oct 2026
- Why Grit Isn’t Enough | Angela Duckworth 17 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- The Leaves Are On The Ground 16 Oct 2026
- Inside Ryan Holiday’s $250K Reading List 16 Oct 2026
- BONUS: Toxic Masculinity, Cancel Culture & Politics 15 Oct 2026
- This Is a Very Important Conversation You’re A Part Of | Jaimie Alexander’s Daily Stoic Practice 15 Oct 2026
- Stoicism Requires You to Stay a Student | Codie Sanchez 14 Oct 2026
- You Don’t Get To Do One Last Thing 14 Oct 2026
- Most Things Haven’t Changed (But This Has) | What Do the Stoics Say About Attachment? 13 Oct 2026
- This Isn’t How Anyone Wants It To Go (So This Is What We Have To Do) | Practice Love 12 Oct 2026
- The Most Important Things You Need To Stop Doing 11 Oct 2026
- The New Gilded Age: Are We Repeating the Gold Rush? | Nathaniel Philbrick 10 Oct 2026
- Not Everyone Is Lucky Enough To Do This | 9 Core Stoic Beliefs 9 Oct 2026
- Go Back And Pick It Up Again | Is This the Life You Worked For? 8 Oct 2026
- BONUS | A Selfish Reason To Be Good 7 Oct 2026
- How to Get the Most Out of Reading (A Stoic Guide) 7 Oct 2026
- You Gave Them This For Free? 7 Oct 2026
- What a Decade of Stoicism Teaches You About Life 6 Oct 2026
- So Much Has Changed. So Little Has Changed. 6 Oct 2026
Link verified 25 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.