Ryan Holiday

“We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.”

“The idea that only the swaggering, all-knowing, and ruthlessly ambitious succeed is a lie. One that has discouraged so many people with so much potential - and worse, encouraged many more to crash and burn.”

“Understanding how the media actually works is critical. Because editors depend on ignorance and media illiteracy to ply their trade. The fact that many readers expect fact checking, editorial oversight, and ethics actually makes it easier for the media to be lazy.”

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

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

“Growth hackers don't tolerate waste.”

“Growth-hacking is about scalability - ideally, you want your marketing efforts to bring in users, which then bring in more users.”

“We all have goals: We want to matter. We want to be important. We want to have freedom and power to pursue our creative work. We want respect from our peers and recognition for our accomplishments. Not out of vanity or selfishness, but of an earnest desire to fulfill our personal potential.”

“Virality is not an accident. It is engineered. And that's why growth hackers beat traditional marketers.”

“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.”

“One of the ironies of being with someone you really love for a long time is becoming completely incapable of handling stressful or difficult things by yourself.”

“At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...”

“Growth hacking isn't some proprietary technical process shrouded in secrecy. In fact, it has grown and developed in the course of very public conversations. There are no trade secrets to guard.”

“Don't move to New York. Find your own city and your way.”

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

“The media, when it's functioning properly, protects the public against marketers and their ceaseless attempts to trick people into buying things.”

“In every job and position, there are valuable lessons to be learned. Even in a nasty, abusive, toxic workplace, you're being taught precisely how not to run an organization.”

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

“The greats - they protect their sleep because it's where the best work comes from. They say no to things. They turn in when they hit their limits. They don't let the creep of sleep deprivation undermine their judgment.”

“In Los Angeles and other cities, being around immigrants is inspiring. They are touching the American Dream and reminding you how much you take it for granted.”