BONUS | Ryan Holiday's Response to Ivanka Trump

Watch Ryan's response on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1OfTQusvYM✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues: courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Stoicism, I think, like Marcus Aurelius's meditations, is so informative on so many levels. I mean, here you have somebody who was literally an emperor, and he's writing this journal in a tent in a battlefield. So his perspective is amazing. And he once wrote that the soul becomes dyed the color of its thoughts. And I think about that all the time. The cost to me of living in a way that's inconsistent and not aligned with what feels right, what models the right thing for my children, what feels inherently true to me, it's too expensive.

• 0:50Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, look, here's the thing. She's totally right. That's exactly what Marcus Aurelius said. That's exactly what Stoicism is about. She's just not living or acting in accordance with it in any way. If you did, you'd have an intervention with your dad, whose life would be dyed with his horrible, negative, mean, bullying thoughts all the time.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN.

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  Don't talk to me that way. You're just a lightweight.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Gavin Newsom has admitted that he has learning disabilities.

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  So he's totally incoherent? And he goes, "Thank you, thank you."

• 1:34Ryan Holiday?

  I'll give you another great Marcus Aurelius quote, Ivanka. He says, "Waste no more time talking about what a good person is like. Just fucking be one." Look, this is just obviously incredibly cringe, the sort of performative philosophy, the popularity of Stoicism with people who have no idea that this is a philosophy built around an ethical core, in which justice is the true north of the philosophy. I'll tell you what Stoicism is not. Stoicism is not a way for you not to have to care about the consequences of the things that are happening around you. Not a way to turn inward and turn away from other people, from what's happening in the world, from not having to care.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  It's not, oh, I'm just gonna think nice thoughts so I can have a nice life. I'm not gonna let critics or criticism penetrate, because then I'd have to, you know, actually make some changes or take some accountability or stare in the face the reality of what I have been complicit in, what I am responsible for. Ivanka Trump quoting Marcus Aurelius. I mean, that's as eye rolly as you can get. The only similarity you have with the Aurelius family is that you're a Commodus and so are your shitty brothers. Look, nobody loves seeing people talk about Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism more than me. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning. My life's work is getting people to pick up meditation.

• 3:03Ryan Holiday?

  So that's awesome. I love to see it. Also, this is as cringe as it possibly gets because it's not real and it's totally missing the point. You know, Marcus Aurelius wasn't just saying these things for his health. He wasn't just quoting random bits of Stoic wisdom. He was trying to live it, right? Trying to live it, trying to put it into practice. That's the whole point of meditations. As I said, he's fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him, not performatively, but in his private journal. These were reminders to himself to do better. And yes, sometimes they're about, you know, directing your thoughts properly. But most of the reminders in meditations are ethical reminders,

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  reminders to be a better person, to follow the Stoic principles, to put them into practice, to be a better person than his job and his wealth would let him get away with being. You know, Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful person in the world. And he wrote obsessively about what that responsibility meant, about justice, about not letting power corrupt you. Stoicism is not a brand, it's a practice. And it demands honesty, it demands self-awareness, it demands accountability, it demands doing the right thing, even when it costs you something, even when it's Painful, even when it would mean, I don't know, confronting your horrible family members. So no, quoting Marx realist doesn't make you a stoic, doesn't make you wise.

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  You have to live and act with integrity. You have to be involved in public life in a way that is beyond reproach, in a way that contributes rather than extracts value from the government.