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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ryan Holiday
Read between
May 4 - May 14, 2025
Justice is a kind of endless passing of torches, an unfinished march that started long ago that each generation joins and continues in its own way.
We have the power… …to care …to help others …to learn how to create change …to be generous …to build bonds …to stand up for the little guy. But it’s not a question of power, it’s a question of will.
every person we meet as an opportunity for kindness. This
Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”
“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones,
or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws…THE RICH AND THE POOR.”
Most social change is a result of a similar kind of rude awakening. Someone sees something and decides to do something.
Indeed, for the rest of his life, Roosevelt would fight on behalf of the exploited and against entrenched and powerful interests.
The problem is that it’s so easy to stay in our bubbles. To not see what we don’t want to see. We don’t do the math—on what it would be like to live on such a wage, on where all these raw materials are coming from, on where our money is going. We ignore the smell…or let people cover it up for us. (There’s a joke that the Royal Family thinks the world smells like fresh paint.)
we should actively seek out learning things that make us blush. We need to learn about the unpleasant facts of history. We need to learn about the inequities of society. We need to become vacuums for the lived experiences of other people—what makes it hard to be them, where they struggle, where they have been mistreated, where their daily lives are different than ours.
We cannot fix what we won’t face. We cannot stop what we refuse to acknowledge.[*]
We must seek out the experiences that will change us, we must seek out an understanding of how the world works and lives. We can’t wait for someone to show us. We can’t assume we know. We can’t accept appearances.
Joseph P. Kennedy was not some secret Nazi, but like a lot of people then and now, he wanted a looming problem to not be his problem. He was looking for a way not to have to care. To not have to get involved. To not have to risk anything.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil,” Kennedy had said in quotation, “is for good men to do nothing.”
is no such thing as neutrality in a world where evil exists. He learned that cancer, if ignored, metastasizes. And this also explains another misquotation Kennedy frequently made:
“Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.”
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
When you shrug at the suffering of someone else, you invite it, inevitably, on yourself and people you love down the line.
That’s what responsibility is, Rickover said, that which forces man to become involved. To try to help. To try to solve.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer said from inside Hitler’s Germany. “God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Remember that you can commit injustice by doing nothing also, Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in Meditations.
But each time someone stoops to help someone in need, each time a society involves itself in a problem that affects just a few of its members, they’re not just strengthening the muscles of the heart but building new muscles too. These muscles, this experience, these tools developed, these lessons learned from one crisis become assets and equity that will someday be of use to you or someone you know.
helping others, you help yourself—not just because we’re all part of that garment of mutuality, but because a government and society that knows how to help one group is going to be less likely to fail catastrophically when it has to help a different group—or a lot of groups.
indifference, you also commit self-harm…but by the time you realize it, it will be too late.
“quietly do the next and most necessary thing,” that if she took the smallest, most viable step in
When the Talmud says that he who saves one person saves the world, maybe that’s partly what they meant—because you certainly save that person’s whole world.
“The mistake I made there,” King explained, “was to protest against segregation generally rather than against a single and distinct facet of it.”
if we don’t begin, not only are we depriving the future of what could have been, but we are also complicit in what’s happening here in the present.
Justice, you might say, is a team sport. Very few of us are able to do much alone. So why do so many people choose to do precisely that? Purity? Ego? Ignorance? What it’s not done out of is a desire to get things done.
Our model should be Thomas Clarkson, bringing together three Anglicans and nine Quakers at that print shop meeting.
You help others. They help you. You are better together. That’s how it works. That’s how justice gets done.
The Stoics would say that we were put here to work with other people—that the ability to collaborate and connect and compromise is in fact one of the things that makes us human. No one is saying this won’t be infuriating. That it won’t require immense discipline and self-control even to be in the same room with people you’ll have to work with—but that’s the point, you’ll be in the room, working. Not outside, yelling.
that you will come to love some of the people you thought you would hate. Or better, that you might convert to love some of the people who were previously driven by hate. That’s the wonderful thing, by allying, by coming together, we are bringing justice in the world. By simply working together, Harvey Milk and the Teamsters created a bridge. Men who were admitted homophobes came to know and understand and support an openly gay man. “The union of beer drivers, blacks, Chicanos and Latinos and gays fighting together,” Milk would write, planted the seeds for future justice and, more beautifully,
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Let’s destroy our enemies by converting them into friends. Let’s get enough friends to make it impossible for anyone to destroy us. We can make the world better by coming together.
Even when the status quo is unjust—in fact, often precisely when the status quo is unjust, there are people who are benefiting from it. Naturally, they’re going to resist change.
Anyone who wants to do good in this world must be a student of power. Anyone who wants to do something other than sit around and wait for change must read Machiavelli and Robert Greene. They must study the campaigns of the great leaders who got things done…as well as the demagogues and tyrants who did evil things. They must know how to effectively gain and use power as well as how to defend against it. How to acquire allies, how to use them, how to get things done over objections and entrenched interests. In fact, the more averse to power one is, the more likely one needs to get up close and
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business suits. That’s one of the ways you get allies—by looking like someone they can do business with. You could argue that this is unfair, that appearances shouldn’t matter, that people should be able to dress and behave however they want, that the only thing that should matter is a person’s character and the righteousness of their cause.
Pragmatism without virtue is dangerous and hollow. Virtue without pragmatism is ineffectual and impotent.
free. He was also a realist and he understood that the good, matched as they were against evil, would need to be both a lion and a fox if they would have any hope of bringing good into the world. That is, brave and savvy.
When you know what your north star is, you have the ability to make these kinds of decisions. It doesn’t mean that every means is justified because you have an end, but it does give you clarity, some wiggle room, some ability to prioritize.
Following a north star does not mean you walk into falls and wade into rushing rivers—a skilled navigator learns how to be directionally correct while not crashing into things or killing themselves. This should not be a controversial statement in the pursuit of justice.
Or we can get to work. Non angeli sed angli. Stop looking for angels. Start looking for angles.
None of us know how long we have—in life, in power, in a certain moment of time. No one can tell you for certain that by putting something off, you’ll have a better shot down the road.[*2] No one can tell you for certain that you will be reelected. Which is why most of the time the pragmatic choice is to do the right thing, right now. When you have the shot you have to take it. People are counting on you.
What justice needs is time, money, leadership. What they need is someone who knows what they’re doing.
described political change as the “slow boring of hard boards.” Pragmatism is competence. So is determination and delegation.
that righteousness without skilled organizing, action without strategy was a recipe for letting the cause down.
know how the system works, do they have the staff, do they have the relationships to get it done? It doesn’t matter that the lawyer is willing to take the case. Can they win it? It doesn’t matter that someone feels bad for the vulnerable or the afflicted, or even that they work really hard on their behalf. What counts is whether this effort is actually alleviating that suffering, not temporarily but permanently.
effective altruism is a new concept?
we are. So it becomes a kind of north star in and of itself. Anne Frank’s motto, which she learned from her parents, was that “no one ever became poor by giving.” It’s true, charity is edifying and profoundly
The more successful you are, the more self-reliant you are, the more left over you have to help others become the same. To whom much is given, much is expected.
“Let the honor of your students be as dear to you as your own,” Rabbi Eleizer famously said. But this is a little easier when you’re a teacher—because that’s the job. If Popovich was running an academy—a nonprofit, mission-based educational organization—these accomplishments would be quite impressive. The fact that he managed to do this while operating at the highest level of a cutthroat game where he’s actually helping, if not producing, his competition? This is something he has done outside his commitment to winning, both as an ideal and as an expectation of his employment. This is not the
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