Quotes from Ryan Holiday

As tough an idea as it often is to stomach, the best way to thrive in a world that requires grunt work is to stop seeing it as grunt work.

Growth hacking isn't some proprietary technical process shrouded in secrecy. In fact, it has grown and developed in the course of very public conversations. There are no trade secrets to guard.

What I've found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.

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.

Watching well-meaning authors follow in the footsteps of someone going in the wrong direction breaks my heart.

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

The primary occupational hazard of blogging is this: it's easier when you yourself take on some of the traits of insanity. It's a job that requires the doer to be selfish, self-absorbed, and superficial.

The reality is that the economic situation for millennials is not a good one.

If you ask most smart or successful people where they learned their craft, they will not talk to you about their time in school. It's always a mentor, a particularly transformative job, or a period of experimentation or trial and error.

When I lived in Louisiana, 'Django Unchained' was shot at my neighbor's house. They shot a Sly Stallone movie in my gym.

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.

In June 2007, I finished up school for the year. I didn't know it at the time, but I was done with college forever. By the end of the summer, I had dropped out and would not return.

Times change. Context changes. Just because something is old and a 'part of our history' shouldn't mean we are forced to honor it forever.

Leveraging community intelligence and making connections is a key component to being a growth hacker.

My advice to young people would be this: Don't move to New York. It is not where you will find yourself.

The media, when it's functioning properly, protects the public against marketers and their ceaseless attempts to trick people into buying things.

Philosophy is not just about talking or lecturing or even reading long, dense books. In fact, it is something men and women of action use - and have used throughout history - to solve their problems and achieve their greatest triumphs. Not in the classroom but on the battlefield, in the forum, and at court.

Reddit is like any democratic form of government - unless carefully guarded by its leaders and members, its trusts and privileges can be and often are abused.

We need to separate marketing messages from content. We need to enforce a clear line between 'editorial' and 'advertising.'

Do I regret how my life turned out? Of course not - not for a single second.

The problem with a lot of marketing advice is that the examples they use are not exactly typical. It's hard for businesses, particularly smaller businesses, to relate to the bold innovations of companies like Apple or Tesla.

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

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.

Life is hard, but we make it much harder.