Quotes from Ryan Holiday

Because we make ourselves deaf to feedback, because we overestimate our abilities, because we become consumed with ourselves, we end up subjecting ourselves not just to the inevitable stumbles or difficulties of life but catastrophic, painful failures.

I took the 'Seinfeld' tour of New York once - and if I think about it too hard, my brain explodes.

If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything.

We want things to go perfectly, so we naturally tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right or once we have our bearings, when, really, it would be better to focus on making do with how things actually are.

I have a pet goat.

When work impedes on sleep, poor planning is to blame - not superior will power.

In my experience, marketing is best when it proves the product it is supporting.

Growth hackers don't tolerate waste.

I don't play videogames and generally think that online activism is a giant waste of time.

No matter how commonplace or dull your first job's duties seem, chances are you can find something to do that others don't want to and make it your own.

As someone responsible for my own fair share of marketing stunts, I am suspicious and cynical - I'll disclose that right up front.

Our facts aren't fact; they are opinions dressed up like facts. Our opinions aren't opinions; they are emotions that feel like opinions. Our information isn't information; it's just hastily assembled symbols.

The process for finding, creating, and consuming information has fundamentally changed with the advent of the web and the rise of blogging.

Brands are essentially forbidden from saying or associating themselves with the Olympics - something that has been commonly owned by Western Civilization since the Greeks - unless they hand over piles of cash to the Games.

Pretty much everyone's career starts the same way: with grunt work. Not just the cliched fetching of coffee, but other lowly tasks: taking notes in meetings, preparing paperwork, scheduling, intensive research - even flat-out doing our bosses' work for them.

Take pride in your work. But it is not all there is.

In 2007, I went to work in Beverly Hills as an intern at The Collective, a talent management agency. I'd been scouted for the job because of a blog I'd started in college and because the blogger-turned-author I worked for, Tucker Max, was producing a project with the company.

Growth hackers are typically computer engineers that build great marketing ideas into the product during the development process.

Everyone faces adversity.

Conning the conmen is one of life's most satisfying pleasures.

Stoicism - and philosophy - are not the domains of idle professors. They are the succor of the successful and the men and women of action.

Like pretty much every other ambitious person, I always figured I'd eventually move to New York. It is, at this point, half-dream and half-obligation for people trying to do big things. It's the American Dream inside the American Dream.

I wholeheartedly agree that many media 'standards' can feel disingenuous or, in fact, be a cover for less-than-honest behavior.

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength.