Read the best collection of Ego Is the Enemy quotes, sayings and lines (with images and pictures) to inspire you to not let pride stand in the way of success in life.
Ego Is the Enemy is the fourth book by author Ryan Holiday, published on June 14, 2016. This is the second book in which he draws from the principles of Stoicism
The book puts forth the argument that often our biggest problems are not caused by external factors such as other people or circumstances.
Also See: Ego Quotes
Instead, our problems stem from our own attitude, selfishness, ego and self-absorption. The book draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to history.
The biggest takeaway from this amazing book is it shows how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures.
These meaningful quotations are an inspiring and timely reminder that humility and confidence are still our greatest friends.
The book gives a deep insight into the biggest reasons why ego is your enemy is that it keeps you out of touch with reality.
Don’t forget to check out The 48 Laws Of Power and The Fault In Our Stars quotes that will inspire you to live a happy and fulfilling life despite the flaws in your destiny.
Top 10 Ego Is The Enemy Quotes
- “Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Quotes from Ego is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday
- “People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Ego Is The Enemy Quotes
- “You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “I was trapped so terribly inside my own head that I was a prisoner to my own thoughts.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
ego is the enemy
- “The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “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
- “Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “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
Ego Is The Enemy Quotes By Ryan Holiday
- “It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “This is what the ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn’t.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
ego is the enemy quotations
- “Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “Our ego wants the ideas and the fact that we aspire to do something about them to be enough.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest.” – 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
- “What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we run from actual accountability.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “Just because you are quiet doesn’t mean that you are without pride. Privately thinking you’re better than others is still pride. It’s still dangerous.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “Ego needs honors in order to be validated. Confidence, on the other hand, is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “If your purpose is something larger than you- to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself- then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “The same goes for us, whatever we do. Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution- and on executing with excellence.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more “Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.” It’s rarely the truth: “I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “When success begins to slip from your fingers—for whatever reason—the response isn’t to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “In this course, it is not ‘Who do I want to be in life?’ but ‘What is it that I want to accomplish in life?’ Setting aside selfish interest, it asks: What calling does it serve? What principles govern my choices? Do I want to be like everyone else or do I want to do something different?” – 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
- “We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek. Because we will be action and education focused, and forgo validation and status, our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative—one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “Ego is the enemy- giving us wicked feedback, disconnected from reality. It’s defensive, precisely when we cannot afford to be defensive. It blocks us from improving by telling us that we don’t need to improve. Then we wonder why we don’t get the results we want, why others are better and why their success is more lasting.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It’s a magnet for enemies and errors. It is Scylla and Charybdis.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes—but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
- “One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.” – 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
- “Passion is seen in those who can tell you in great detail who they intend to become and what their success will be like- they might even be able to tell you specifically when they intend to achieve it or describe to you legitimate and sincere worries they have about the burdens of such accomplishments. They can tell you all the things they’re going to do, or have even begun, but they cannot show you their progress. Because there rarely is any.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “Ego is its own worst enemy. It hurts the ones we love too. Our families and friends suffer for it. So do our customers, fans, and clients. A critic of napoleon nailed it when remarking: ‘He [Napoleon] despises the nation whose applause he seeks.’ He couldn’t help but see the French people as pieces to be manipulated, people he had to be better than, people who, unless they were totally, unconditionally supportive of him, were against him.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “‘A man is worked upon by what he works on,’ Frederick Douglass once said. He would know. He’d been a slave, and he saw what it did to everyone involved, including the slaveholders themselves. Once a free man, he saw that the choices people made, about their careers and their lives, had the same effect. What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you. The egocentric path requires, as Boyd knew, many compromises.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
- “Why do you think that great leaders and thinkers throughout history have “gone out into the wilderness” and come back with inspiration, with a plan, with an experience that puts them on a course that changes the world? It’s because in doing so they found perspective, they understood the larger picture in a way that wasn’t possible in the bustle of everyday life. Silencing the noise around them, they could finally hear the quiet voice they needed to listen to. Creativity.” – Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Three Keypoints From Ego Is The Enemy
- Think of yourself as an eternal student to stay humble.
- Delegate tasks to learn to trust in others.
- Use unexpected results as inflection points to keep improving.
- Talk & think less; do more.
Don’t forget to check out The Alchemist Quotes and Catcher In The Rye Quotes that will inspire you to live a happy and fulfilling life despite the flaws in your destiny.
Did these thought-provoking lines help you to look at life differently? Do you have any other inspirational quotes to add? Tell us in the comment section below.
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