Discipline Is Destiny (Ryan Holiday)

• "Freedom, as Eisenhower famously said, is actually only the "opportunity for self discipline."

• "Temperance is not deprivation but command of oneself physically, mentally, spiritually—demanding the best of oneself, even when no one is looking, even when allowed less."

• "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 or endlessly ambitious."

Part I: The Exterior (The Body)

Ruling Over the Body

• "...he had the same voice in his head that all of us do. He just cultivated the strength—made a habit—of not listening to it. Because once you start compromising, well, now you're compromised..."

• "When a man can control his life, his physical needs, his lower self, he elevates himself" —Muhammad Ali, American professional boxer

• "You have to do your best while you still have a chance. Life is short. You never know when the game, when your body, will be taken away from you. Don't waste it!"

• "Temperance, like a tempered sword. Simplicity and modesty. Fortitude and self-control in all things—except our determination and toughness. We owe it to ourselves, to our goals, to the game, to keep going. To keep pushing. To stay pure. To be tough. To conquer the bodies before they conquer us."

Attack the Dawn   

• "For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being in the light, it's being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense. —Toni Morrison, American novelist

 

Quit Being a Slave

• "At the core of this idea of self-mastery is an instinctive reaction against anything that masters us."

• "But just because you started, doesn't mean you have to continue, the fact that you didn't know then doesn't change the fact that you're choosing it now."

Avoid the Superfluous 

• "By being a little hard on ourselves, it makes it harder for others to be hard on us."

Just Show Up

• "The genius hangs around his laboratory day and night. If anything happens, he's there to catch it. If wasn't, it might happen just the same... only it would never be his." —Thomas Edison, American inventor

 

Sweat the Small Stuff

"The devil is in the details, but so is salvation." —Hyman G. Rickover, U.S. Navy admiral

 

Practice... Then Practice More

• "We don't rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training." —Archilochus, ancient Greek poet

 

Just Work

• "El trabajo gustoso—the pleasurable work—not what has come out the other side." —Juan Ramon Jimenez, Spanish poet

• "Always and forever, the rewards is the work. It is a joy itself."

Part II: The Inner Domain (The Temperament)

Ruling Over Yourself

• "If things are going to stay the same, then things are going to have to change." —Giuseppe Tomasi, Italian writer

• "Greatness is not just one does, but also what one refuse to do. It's how one bears the constraints of their world or their profession, it's what we're able to do within limitations—creatively, consciously, calmly."

Look at Everything Like This

• "Life is going to throw so much at you, as it did to Washington, to Frankl, to Roosevelt, to every parent and person who ever lived. The question is: How are you going to look at all this? How in control are you of the light under which you examine the events of life?"

 

Wait for This Sweet Fruit 

• "If things went exactly the way we wanted, if it didn't demand discomfort and sacrifice and patient endurance, then no discipline would be required, and everyone would do it. Then the fruit wouldn't just be less sweet—someone would have already eaten it."

 

Can You Get Back Up? 

• "Losing is not always up to us... but being a loser is. Throwing in the towel on a fight we've clearly lost is one thing, throwing in the towel on fighting, on your standards, from that point forward? Now you've been more than beaten, you've been defeated."

 

The Battle Against Pleasure

• "Discipline is not a punishment, it's a way to avoid punishment."

Fight the Provocation

• "It's the easiest thing in the world to respond to intemperance with intemperance. We have to remember: Someone else's lack of self-control is not a justification of abandoning our own."

Beware This Madness

• "You can be angry... the important thing is not to do anything out of anger."

Silence is Strength

• "Cato chose to speak only when he was certain that his words weren't better left unsaid."

• "Free speech is a right, not an obligation."

Put Up Boundaries

• "The people we ought to admire are quiet. Dignified. Reserved. Serious. Professional. Respectful of themselves and others.

• "Without boundaries, we are overwhelmed. We are stretched too thin. So thin that those features that previously defined us start to disappear until there's no telling where we start and the energy vampires around us end."

Do Your Best

• "Your success doesn't go to your head because you know you're capable of more. Your failures don't destroy you because you're sure there wasn't anything more you could have done."

• "What does matter is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift. The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity."

• "Your best is good enough." —Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish carpenter

 

Part III: The Magisterial (The Soul)

Elevating Yourself...

• "Because that's what great leaders do: They do the right thing, even when—especially when—it costs them."

Tolerant with Others. Strict with Yourself

• "Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices." —Benjamin Franklin, American polymath

• "Tolerant with others, strict with yourself" —Marcus Aurelius, Stoic philosopher

• "It will take every ounce of your self-control to enforce that—not because it's hard to be hard on yourself, but because it's so hard to let people get away with things you'd never allow in yourself."

• "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" —William Shakespeare, English writer

Make Others Better

• "What we accomplish can make things possible for others. It starts with us, it starts within us. But it doesn't stop there."

Be Best

• "It just happens that wonderful external accomplishments, like those achieved by Elizabeth and Marcus, can come out of internal endeavor. They are not the goal, they are the byproduct."

• "The battle to be the best has less to do with beating others and more to do with beating down those urges, those flaws, those selfish instincts that every human has."

• "Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant's court become his slave, although he went there a free man. —Sophocles, Greek tragedian

• "It costs him everything. As it does for all of us, when we compromise, when we relax our discipline, when we make "exceptions" and do what is expedient instead of what we know is right."

Unchanged by Success 

• "Self mastery is one of those things that demands more of itself while not necessarily begetting of itself at the same time. Not only does self-mastery not make itself any easier to achieve, but the rewards for it are a million seductive reasons (and dollars) to let up."