Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ryan Holiday

Quote by Ryan Holiday

Work

Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday (born June 16, 1987) is an American author, marketer, and advocate of Stoicism. He is best known for his books such as 'The Obstacle Is the Way' and 'The Daily Stoic,' which apply ancient philosophy to modern life. Holiday served as the director of marketing for American Apparel and has written for Forbes, Fast Company, and The New York Observer. His works have sold over 4 million copies worldwide and been translated into 30 languages. Through his books, podcast, and speaking engagements, Holiday promotes Stoic principles to help people navigate adversity, stress, and uncertainty. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family. more

You May Also Like

“Naturally, it is too good to be true. Diamond's idea of helping you with your job is to lecture you on the obsolete and retrograde nature of salaried employment. He goes on at length, in his constricted nasal manner, about how, in our social history, jobs are an aberration, a flash in the pan. Human beings have been on earth for a million years, he claims (you think he's mistaken about that), but have only had jobs for the past five hundred years (that doesn't sound right, either), an inconsequential period, relatively speaking. People have always worked, he explains, but they have only held jobs with wages and employers and vacations and pink slips--for a very short time.”

“Show up and try. Get on the treadmill. Pick up the violin. Answer some emails. Script out some scenes. Reach out to some clients. Read some reports. Lift a couple weights. Jog one mile. Cross one thing off the to-do list. Chase down a lead. It doesn't matter what it is; all aspects of our life benefit from this circumscribed kind of discipline.”

“Only you know what it will look like to train in your art like a samurai, an Olympic athlete, a master in pursuit of excellence. Only you will know what you need to practice from morning until night, what to repeat ten thousand times. It won't be easy, but in that burden is also freedom and confidence. The pleasure of the flow state. The rhythm of second nature. The quiet calmness of knowing that, from the practice, you'll know exactly what to do when it counts .... the pride and the dependability of doing it too.”