The Obstacle Is the Way Quotes

“The worst is yet to come.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“The majority of my generation decides to move back in with their parents after college. Unemployment, for them, is twice the national average. According to one 2011 study by the University of Michigan, many graduates aren’t even bothering to learn how to drive. The road is blocked, they are saying, so why get a license I won’t be able to use? We whine and complain and mope when things won’t go our way. We’re crushed when what we were “promised” is revoked—as if that’s not allowed to happen. Instead of doing much about it, we sit at home and play video games or travel or worse, pay for more school with more loan debt that will never be forgiven. And then we wonder why it isn’t getting any better.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“While overpaid CEOs take long vacations and hide behind e-mail autoresponders, some programmer is working eighteen-hour days coding the start-up that will destroy that CEO’s business.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, outlined when he described what happens to businesses in tumultuous times: “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be, or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“If something is in our control, its worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things. It is not in our control how long we'll live or what will come and take us from life. But thinking about mortality creates real perspective, and urgency. It doesn't need to be depressing. Because its invigorating.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill’s old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Placed in some situation that seems unchangeable and undeniably negative, we can turn it into a learning experience, a humbling experience, a chance to provide comfort to others.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

“take the trouble you’re dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up. — CHUCK PALAHNIUK”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

“The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you “push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“I know you had nothing to do with the injustice that brought me to this jail, so I’m willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner—because I am not and never will be powerless.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“For instance, in the design stages for a new mouse for an early Apple product, Jobs had high expectations. He wanted it to move fluidly in any direction—a new development for any mouse at that time—but a lead engineer was told by one of his designers that this would be commercially impossible. What Jobs wanted wasn’t realistic and wouldn’t work. The next day, the lead engineer arrived at work to find that Steve Jobs had fired the employee who’d said that. When the replacement came in, his first words were: “I can build the mouse.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

“Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing. When given an unfair task, some rightly see it as a chance to test what they’re made of—to give it all they’ve got, knowing full well how difficult it will be to win. They see it as an opportunity because it is often in that desperate nothing-to-lose state that we are our most creative.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Doing new things invariably means obstacles. A new path is, by definition, uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we cut away debris and remove impediments. Only in struggling with the impediments that made others quit can we find ourselves on untrodden territory—only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too impatient to be taught.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Just because the conditions aren’t exactly to your liking, or you don’t feel ready yet, doesn’t mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can’t actually influence is wasted—self-indulgent and self-destructive. So much power—ours, and other people’s—is frittered away in this manner. To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice—a choice that is up to us.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Be realistic we're told. Listen to feedback. Play well with others. Compromise. Well, what if the "other" party is wrong? What if conventional wisdom is too conservative? It's this all-too-common impulse to complain, defer, and then give up that holds us back.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? Nope. Then get back to work! Subconsciously, we should be constantly asking ourselves this question: Do I need to freak out about this?”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“In Silicon Valley, start-ups don’t launch with polished, finished businesses. Instead, they release their “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP)—the most basic version of their core idea with only one or two essential features. The point is to immediately see how customers respond. And, if that response is poor, to be able to fail cheaply and quickly.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Speculation led to disaster, he realized, and he needed to always ignore the “mad crowd” and its inclinations.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“It’s a cliché question to ask, What would I change about my life if the doctor told me I had cancer? After our answer, we inevitably comfort ourselves with the same insidious lie: Well, thank God I don’t have cancer.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alterative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph