23 Ryan Holiday Quotes from Ego is the Enemy on Success, Humility, and Work Ethic

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Excerpt: Your ego is holding you back from realizing your full potential in life. Read our 23 quotes from Ego is the Enemy to find out how.

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Introduction: Why is the ego the enemy?

The ego is the sense we have of our self-esteem and our self-worth. When it comes to moving forward in life, Ryan Holiday, author of Ego is the Enemy argues that both in success and in failure our ego only gets in the way and holds us back.

The time we spend in our own heads comparing ourselves to others and measuring our esteem is time that is distracted from the real work we could be doing—the work of producing our art and cultivating our life’s task.

In success, the ego expands and can lead us away from the humble and determined mindset(s) that got us to our successes in the first place. Too many successes in a row and we start to see the ego move from unsure to confidence to cockiness. Bad habits can start to form including less time spent in preparation and an increased lack of desire to learn and/or practice.

Keeping our ego in check in success keeps us focused on the same processes that got us to those victories in the first place and ensures we humbly keep working towards our goals.

In failure, we see the ego deflate and magnify every mistake—sometimes in completely blown out of proportion ways. By removing our ego from failure situations, we can quickly start to see the learning opportunities in such moments and start to focus our energy on growing rather than shrinking.

The challenge is that our ego is too attached to our comfort zone. It’s used to the daily patterns, routines, and habits and doesn’t want anything to change. It’s clingy. And the attachment feels safe, but it’s also smothering.

No change means no growth—and no growth means slow death. What the ego doesn’t see is that right outside of the comfort zone, is the learning zone. And time spent in the learning zone leads to growth—and growth means life.

The first step to entering into the learning zone, Holiday suggests, is to spend time understanding the ego and learning how we can remove it from our everyday experiences. Because not only does ego distract us from important learning opportunities—both in success and in failure—but, it keeps us focused solely on ourselves and how we compare to others.

If we want to maximize our potential, the focus should not be on us vs. them, but rather it should be on us vs. where we were before. This is not a focus that will come naturally. Rather, it is a focus that will only be developed with conscious, deliberate practice.

By focusing on the process and the actions we can take at every step along the way, both in success and in failure, and by removing our ego from the equation, we can magnify our effectiveness in producing results.

Remember that the ego will do everything it can to convince you to stay comfy and cozy right where you are with the routine and habits you already have. Rise above it and let your ego get a little uncomfortable. The challenges that are brought forth in the learning zone are the facilitators for growth and without them, your life will be smothered from achieving it’s full potential.

So, are you ready to give your ego a kick?! Good. Because below you’ll find our 23 quotes from Ego is the Enemy that will keep you humbly on track towards accomplishing your life goals. Take special note of any thoughts that make you nod your head or cause you to think a little deeper. Those are the thoughts that will help you change your path and help you take your next step forward. Enjoy and Good luck!

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The List: 23 Ryan Holiday Quotes from Ego is the Enemy on Success, Humility, and Work Ethic

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“Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work.  It means you’re the least important person in the room—until you change that with results.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble?  I believe there’s one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, then humbly improve.  They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Today, books are cheaper than ever.  Courses are free.  Access to teachers is no longer a barrier—technology has done away with that.  There is no excuse for not getting your education, and because the information we have before us is so vast, there is no excuse for ever ending that process either.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Christians believe that pride is a sin because it is a lie—it convinces people that they are better than they are, that they are better than God made them.  Pride leads to arrogance and then away from humility and connection with their fellow man.  You don’t have to be Christian to see the wisdom in this.  You need only to care about your career to understand that pride—even in real accomplishments—is a distraction and a deluder.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“You can’t learn if you think you already know.  You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions.  You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“We don’t like thinking that someone is better than us.  Or that we have a lot left to learn.  We want to be done.  We want to be ready.  We’re busy and overburdened.  For this reason, updating your appraisal of your talents in a downward direction is one of the most difficult things to do in life—but it is almost always a component of mastery.  The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.  Studious self-assessment is the antidote.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“It doesn’t matter how talented you are, how great your connections are, how much money you have.  When you want to do something—something big and important and meaningful—you will be subjected to treatment ranging from indifference to outright sabotage.  Count on it.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people—their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness—are hardly going to work out well for them in the end.  Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment.  The question we must ask ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“The art of taking feedback is such a crucial skill in life, particularly harsh and critical feedback.  We not only need to take this harsh feedback, but actively solicit it, labor to seek out the negative precisely when our friends and family and brain are telling us that we’re doing great.  The ego avoids such feedback at all costs, however.  Who wants to remand themselves to remedial training?  It thinks it already knows how and who we are—that is, it thinks we are spectacular, perfect, genius, truly innovative.  It dislikes reality and prefers its own assessment.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“We tend to be on guard against negativity, against the people who are discouraging us from pursuing our callings or doubting the visions we have for ourselves.  This is certainly an obstacle to beware of, though dealing with it is rather simple.  What we cultivate less is how to protect ourselves against the validation and gratification that will quickly come our way if we show promise.  What we don’t protect ourselves against are people and things that make us feel good—or rather, too good.  We must prepare for pride and kill it early—or it will kill what we aspire to.  We must be on guard against that wild self-confidence and self-obsession.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“All great men and women went through difficulties to get to where they are, all of them made mistakes.  They found within those experiences some benefit—even if it was simply the realization that they were not infallible and that things would not always go their way.  They found that self-awareness was the way out and through—if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have gotten better and they wouldn’t have been able to rise again.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Living clearly and presently takes courage.  Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if – especially if – it’s uncomfortable.  Be part of what’s going on around you.  Feast on it, adjust for it.  There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Too often, convinced of our own intelligence, we stay in a comfort zone that ensures that we never feel stupid (and are never challenged to learn or reconsider what we know).  It obscures from view various weakness in our understanding, until eventually it’s too late to change course.  This is where the silent toll is taken.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety.  We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything.  We cannot buy into myths we make ourselves, or the noise and chatter of the outside world.  We must understand that we are a small part of an interconnected universe.  On top of all this, we have to build an organization and a system around what we do—one that is about the work and not about us.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the weather kept everyone else indoors.  Work is pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes.  It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting.  Because there is work to be done.  Work doesn’t want to be good.  It is made so, despite the headwind.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy [Read Matt’s Blog on this quote]

“The more you have and do, the harder maintaining fidelity to your purpose will be, but the more critically you will need to.  Everyone buys into the myth that if only they had that—usually what someone else has—they would be happy.  It may take getting burned a few times to realize the emptiness of this illusion.  We all occasionally find ourselves in the middle of some project or obligation and can’t understand why we’re there.  It will take courage and faith to stop yourself.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Talking and doing fight for the same resources.  Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress.  The same goes for verbalization.  Even talking aloud to ourselves while we work through difficult problems has been shown to significantly decrease insight and breakthroughs.  After spending so much time thinking, explaining, and talking about a task, we start to feel that we’ve gotten closer to achieving it.  Or worse, when things get tough, we feel we can toss the whole project aside because we’ve given it our best try, although of course we haven’t.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“[Success] is not about beating the other guy.  It’s not about having more than the others.  It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it.  It’s about going where you set out to go.  About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose.  That’s it.  No more and no less.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy [Read Matt’s Blog on this quote]

“Appearances are deceiving.  Having authority is not the same as being an authority.  Having the right and being right are not the same either.  Being promoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good work and it doesn’t mean you are worthy of promotion (they call it failing upward in such bureaucracies).  Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Why is success so ephemeral? Ego shortens it.  Whether a collapse is dramatic or a slow erosion, it’s always possible and often unnecessary.  We stop learning, we stop listening, and we lose our grasp on what matters.  We become victims of ourselves and the competition.  Sobriety, open-mindedness, organization, and purpose – these are the great stabilizers.  They balance out the ego and pride that comes with achievement and recognition.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against.  Your standards are.  Winning is not enough.  People can get lucky and win.  People can be assholes and win.  Anyone can win.  But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

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If you enjoyed these quotes from Ego is the Enemy, you should consider picking up a copy of Ryan Holiday’s book to read in full. It comes highly recommended:

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