“Toni Morrison came home one day complaining about her job cleaning someone’s house to her father. She expected him to get angry on her behalf or to pity her. Instead, he said, ‘Listen. You don’t live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home.’ What he was teaching her, Morrison later wrote, became a set of principles she based her life around. (1) Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself. (2) You make the job; it doesn’t make you. (3) Your real life is with us, your family. (4) You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.”
Ryan Holiday
“…Play the game of appearances without being distracted or consumed by appearance. We dress well… but not too well. We take care to take care of ourselves… but never at the neglect of the people or things in our care. We take our appearance seriously… without taking ourselves seriously. As they say in fashion circles, we wear the suit, the suit doesn’t wear us. We look sharp to stay sharp, to be sharp… because we are sharp.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 70)
“Nobody does their best in their bathrobe… which is why we ought to take a shower and get ready in the morning, even if we’re not going to leave the house. Shine your shoes… until you are the one glowing.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 69)
“Some ask, What is the reward for all this labor? They are incorrect if they think it’s awards and fame and weeks on the bestseller list. Others want a guarantee: If I put in my ten thousand hours, then I’ll get the job? Then I’ll be able to go pro? Then I’ll be rich? No, that’s not how this goes. Always and forever, the reward is the work. It is a joy itself. It is torture and also heaven—sweaty, wonderful salvation. And that’s how you manage to do prodigious amounts of it—not grudgingly, but lovingly.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 64)
“Hustle isn’t always about hurrying. It is about getting things done, properly. It’s okay to move slowly… provided that you never stop. Do we not understand that in the story of the tortoise and the hare, that it was actually the turtle who hustled?”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 57)
“Show up…
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 44)
…when you’re tired
…when you don’t have to
…even if you have an excuse
…even if you’re busy
…even if you won’t get recognized for it
…even if it’s been kicking your ass lately.
Once something is done, you can build on it. Once you get started, momentum can grow. When you show up, you can get lucky.”
“For very few of us—no matter the profession—’When are you at your best?’ is answered with ‘When I am drowning in paperwork, dirty dishes, half-empty water bottles, and floors that haven’t been swept.’ The session in the weight room goes better when the weights are stacked and the dumbbells are in the right place. The craftsman is safer when the workshop is tidy. The team plays better when the locker room is kept up. The meetings run tighter when the conference room is fresh and sparse. The general ensures troop discipline by keeping their own quarters spartan and spotless. The space where great work is done is holy. We must respect it.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 41)
“I would die without my [insert luxury item], we’ll say in jest. How can anybody live like this? we’ll ask not so rhetorically. The answer? They’re stronger than you. ‘The more a man is,’ the editor Maxwell Perkins had inscribed on his mantel, ‘the less he wants.’ When you strip away the unnecessary and the excessive, what’s left is you. What’s left is what’s important.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 36)
“A person who lives below their means has far more latitude than a person who can’t. That’s why Michelangelo, the artist, didn’t live as austerely as Cato but he avoided the gifts dangled by his wealthy patrons. He didn’t want to owe anyone. Real wealth, he understood, was autonomy.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 35)
“When we desire more than we need, we make ourselves vulnerable. When we overextend ourselves, when we chase, we are not self-sufficient. This is why Cato declined expensive gifts, why he did his political work for no pay, why he traveled with few servants and kept things simple. A Spartan king was once asked what the Spartans got from their ‘spartan’ habits. ‘Freedom is what we reap from this way of life,’ he told him.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 34)
“We are meant for more than simply existing. We are here for more than just lying around and seeking pleasure. We have been given incredible gifts by nature. We are an apex predator, a freakishly elite product of millions of years of evolution. How will you choose to spend this bounty? By letting your assets atrophy?”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 26)
“She was no longer a child, and yet for all her responsibilities, everything was quite simple: Her kids needed her to be an adult. So did her unfinished novel. Wake up. Show up. Be present. Give it everything you’ve got.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 19)
“Like Lou Gehrig, each of us is in a battle with our physical form. First, to master it and bring it to its full potential. Second, as we age or get sick, to arrest its decline—to quite literally wrest the life from it while we can. The body, you must understand, is a metaphor. It’s a training ground, a proving ground for the mind and the soul.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 16)
“[Lou Gehrig] knew that getting comfortable was the enemy, and that success is an endless series of invitations to get comfortable. It’s easy to be disciplined when you have nothing. What about when you have everything? What about when you’re so talented that you can get away with not giving everything? The thing about Lou Gehrig is that he chose to be in control. This wasn’t discipline enforced from above or by the team. His temperance was an interior force, emanating from deep within his soul. He chose it, despite the sacrifices, despite the fact that others allowed themselves to forgo such penance and got away with it. Despite the face that it usually wasn’t recognized—not until long after he was gone anyway.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 9)
“[Lou] Gehrig was fully ready to admit that his discipline meant he missed out on a few pleasures. He also knew that those who live the fast or the easy life miss something too—they fail to full realize their own potential. Discipline isn’t deprivation… it brings rewards.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 8)
“As a rookie, Joe DiMaggio once asked [Lou] Gehrig who he though was going to pitch for the opposing team, hoping perhaps, to hear it was someone easy to hit. ‘Never worry about that, Joe,’ Gehrig explained. ‘Just remember they always save the best for the Yankees.’ And by extension, he expected every member of the Yankees to bring their best with them too. That was the deal: To whom much is given, much is expected. The obligation of a champion is to act like a champion… while working as hard as somebody with something to prove.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 7)
“Once you start compromising, well, now you’re compromised…”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 7)
“The conspiracy theorist in your Facebook feed. The politically radicalized family member. The angry stranger looking for an argument. Crazy people and crazy situations are opportunities to practice virtue. To show courage by standing firm in your principles. To demonstrate justice by treating them fairly despite their unfairness to you. To exercise temperance by controlling your emotions when they’re trying to provoke you. To insist on what’s right. To fight for change where you can. To put your efforts where they make a positive difference.”
Ryan Holiday
“There is a part of us that celebrates, perhaps envies, those who let themselves get away with more, who hold themselves to lower standards—the rock stars, the famous, the wicked. It seems easier. It seems like more fun. It might even be the way to get ahead. Is that right? No, it is an illusion. Under closer inspection: No one has a harder time than the lazy. No one experiences more pain than the glutton. No success is shorter lived than the reckless and endlessly ambitious. Failing to realize your full potential is a terrible punishment. Greed moves the goalposts, preventing one from ever enjoying what one has. Even if the outside world celebrates them, on the inside there is only misery, self-loathing, and dependence.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page xxiii)
Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control [Book]
![Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control [Book] by Ryan Holiday](https://movemequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Discipline-is-Destiny-by-Ryan-Holiday.jpg "Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control [Book] by Ryan Holiday")
Book Overview: To master anything, one must first master themselves–one’s emotions, one’s thoughts, one’s actions. Eisenhower famously said that freedom is really the opportunity to practice self-discipline. Cicero called the virtue of temperance the polish of life. Without boundaries and restraint, we risk not only failing to meet our full potential and jeopardizing what we have achieved, but we ensure misery and shame. In a world of temptation and excess, this ancient idea is more urgent than ever.
In Discipline is Destiny, Holiday draws on the stories of historical figures we can emulate as pillars of self-discipline, including Lou Gehrig, Queen Elizabeth II, boxer Floyd Patterson, Marcus Aurelius and writer Toni Morrison, as well as the cautionary tales of Napoleon, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Babe Ruth. Through these engaging examples, Holiday teaches readers the power of self-discipline and balance, and cautions against the perils of extravagance and hedonism.
At the heart of Stoicism are four simple virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Everything else, the Stoics believed, flows from them. Discipline is Destiny will guide readers down the path to self-mastery, upon which all the other virtues depend. Discipline is predictive. You cannot succeed without it. And if you lose it, you cannot help but bring yourself failure and unhappiness.