This Is All There Is | 10 Stoic Quotes That Will Motivate You To Seize The Day

It’s one of the great moments in the history of comedy. At Comedy Central Presents: The Roast of Bob Saget, the comedian Norm Macdonald is up roasting his friend, Bob Saget and the rest of the panel. Yet instead of doing what nearly every other comedian has done in the history of roasts, Norm goes on stage and basically bombs on purpose, telling a series of inane and mediocre jokes that he may or may not have stolen from an old joke book. It’s worth watching if only for the courage and self-discipline that this artistic statement must have taken.---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares ten quotes from the Stoics that will give you the boost you need when you're feeling a lack of motivation.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  This is all there is. It's one of the great moments in the history of comedy. At Comedy Central presents The Roast of Bob Saget. The comedian Norm MacDonald is up roasting his friend Bob Saget and the rest of the panel. Yet, instead of doing what nearly every comedian has done in the history of roasts, Norm goes onstage and basically bombs on purpose, telling a series of inane and mediocre jokes that he may or may not have stolen from an old joke book. It's worth watching, if only for the courage and the self-discipline that this artistic statement must have taken. The audience is confused, their laughter trailing off to almost nothing as the set seems to go worse and worse. His

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  friends on the dais, all professional comedians, are nervous with discomfort, empathizing with what seems like the thing that all performers dread: just not having it that night. All the momentum of the roast seems to disappear. Indeed, it's almost like time begins to move excruciatingly slow as Norm performs flawless but terrible comedy over the next eight-plus minutes. Yet, throughout it all, he never breaks character, he ignores the audience, he just goes on making whatever point he intended to make with this performance. He never doubts himself. He doesn't pull the ripcord and change to something that might land better. He manages to never betray anything but complete seriousness and total commitment,

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  which paid off only later in the many post-show viewings when people started to realize what a meta-performance this was, that it was funny precisely because it wasn't funny.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  But what's also interesting is that only two people on the dais, Bob Saget and Gilbert Gottfried, seem to understand and appreciate the brilliance. Although nervous about the high-wire act that their friend is pulling, they laugh in amazement throughout the set. It's also interesting and tragic that these three men, Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, and Norm MacDonald, would all die within six months of each other. And two other comedians onstage that night, Greg Giraldo and Clarice Leachman, the actress, would also die. It calls to mind Marcus Aurelius's observation about how everything is transitory, the knower and the known. The ones who got the joke are gone, and so were the ones who didn't. Even the guy who made it is gone. So what is it, then? What matters? What lasts?

• 2:48Ryan Holiday?

  Just the moment, a moment of joy, a moment of artistic expression and innovation, a moment of discipline and self-control, a moment of bravery. Marcus Aurelius may have said that all this was transitory, but he also said that it was plenty, that an afternoon or an evening or a handful of seconds of it was enough. And it is. It's all there is.

• 3:20Ryan Holiday?

  "The whole point of studying philosophy," Seneca said, "was to become a better person. And if you're not becoming better, if you're not growing and improving," he says, "if you're not acquiring things that fortify you against death and poverty and disaster and fear and extreme emotions, then you're doing something wrong." That's what's so amazing about Stoicism. That's what it does. It did it for Seneca. It did it for Marcus Aurelius. It did it for me. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written these books about Stoic philosophy. I've been lucky enough to talk about it to the NBA and the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leaders. In today's episode, I want to give you 10 life-changing Stoic quotes, Stoic quotes that will make you a better human being, whoever you are, whatever it is that you do.

• 4:07Ryan Holiday?

  My friend Steven Pressfield talks about the resistance, the thing that gets in between us and what we want to do. He says, "Nobody says I'm never gonna write my symphony. He says, "I'm gonna do it tomorrow." Well, Marx really struggles with the resistance too, like all of us do. He says, "You could be good today, instead you choose tomorrow. We put it off." And actually, Seneca says something similar. He says, "The one thing fools all have in common is that they're always getting ready to begin." So the point for Marx was that you do it now, not later. You do it now.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  In one of his letters, Seneca says that we treat the body rigorously so that it would not be disobedient to the mind. And I think about that when I'm jumping in the shower, jumping in a cold pool, whether I'm pushing myself while I'm running or lifting weights. He's like, "I'm reminding the body who's in charge." This idea that we treat the body rigorously, that that's what the physical practice is. It's a reminder of who's in charge. It's the mind asserting itself over the body. We tend to think of philosophers as these sort of soft people. But actually, the mental practice, the mental resilience, being in charge of yourself is the ultimate muscle that you want to cultivate. And it's the thing that every great athlete has to have.

• 5:22Ryan Holiday?

  The whole thing boils down to this one idea. There's some stuff that's up to us and some stuff that's not up to us. Epictetus says, "Our chief task in life is, is this up to me or is this not up to me?" And I know that seems really basic, but the truth is, most of us, most people spend most of their time on stuff that's not up to them, right? We complain about stuff, we wish stuff was otherwise. We spend our time worrying about the future or regretting the past. And none of that is energy spent towards what we actually control, which is right now, what's right in front of us. So that's the idea. Is this up to me? Is this not up to me? And this dichotomy of control, as the Stoics say, what really the dichotomy of control is about is resource allocation. Are you gonna spend your time and energy on things that are up to you or things that are not up to you?

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  Every second you spend on something that's not up to you is wasted. And at least if you spend it on something that's up to you, it might make a difference.

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  "The best revenge is to not be like that," the Stoics would say. And if you think about it, yes, people can hurt you. But when you look at those people, who they are, why they do what they do, it doesn't actually feel like they're getting away with anything. They're their own worst enemy. It sucks to be them. So the Stoics say you give up on revenge. You give up on getting even because you already won. You are already better by not being that person. The best revenge, Marcus Aurelius says, is to not be like that.

• 6:47Ryan Holiday?

  And it is inevitable that we will fall short. Marcus did, I do, everyone does. Antoninus Pius probably did too. Which is why in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says to pick yourself back up when you fall. But he also says to celebrate the fact that you're a human being. What matters, he says, is that you come back to the rhythm of it. We're going to be jarred by circumstances. We're going to be messed up. We're going to slip on our diet, on our New Year's resolution, on the progress we were making. That's okay. What matters is that you get back up. What matters is that more often than not, you stick to it, that you always come back home to it.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  At one point in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, "Avoid false friendship at all costs." He says, "Nothing is more painful, nothing is worse." And he knows this from experience. I tell, "An obstacle is the way." The story of Marcus being betrayed by Evidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends. He declares himself emperor. He essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray. People could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this, and we have to be prepared for it.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  It's actually in Book Six that I found the meditation that I would build my own first Book of Stoic Philosophy around. Marcus says, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." He says, "Look, stuff can get in the way. You can be impeded." He says, "But nothing can impede your intentions or your dispositions." He says, "The mind can convert to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting." That's the power of Stoicism, that we always have the opportunity to practice a virtue. We don't choose where we are, we don't choose what's happening, but we choose how we respond to what's happening. We can choose to use this, this moment, whatever that is for you, we can use it as a chance to be our best selves.

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  My friend emailed me on a Friday. I saw it. I told myself I was gonna respond on Monday. And by Sunday, he was gone. He'd fallen dead of a heart attack. And this is why the Stoics practiced memento mori. Life is short. You can go at any moment. You could leave life right now, as Marcus says, but also they could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. The people who are precious to you, you do not possess them. You can't take them for granted. You can't assume they're gonna be here forever. You can't assume you're always going to have them. You don't have them now. They are here on loan. They are here under shaky status at best. So you can't take people for granted. You can't take time for granted. You can't go to bed angry, as they say. You can't hold on to grudges. Be with them now while you can. Forgive them now while you can.

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  Appreciate them now while you can. Enjoy them now while you can. That's the only thing we can do.

• 9:50Ryan Holiday?

  You have two ears and one mouth, as Zeno says, for good reason. You're supposed to talk less than you listen. You're supposed to listen more than you talk. The Stoics believed that conceit, that arrogance, was the impediment to all knowledge. And we're talking about this in The Daily Stoic today. You can't learn that what you think you already know. If your cup is already full, nothing more can come inside of it. If you're always talking, you can't hear what other people are saying. So for the Stoics, humility was the key. Conceit was the enemy. Humility was the key. Ego is the enemy, but humility, openness, quietness, listening, that was the way forward. That was how you grew. That's how you get better.

• 10:34Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics believed in this idea of Sympathia, that there was this whole, this collective we're in. Marcus Verius talks about the common good, not like once or twice, but dozens and dozens of times. He believed that, yeah, he was a Roman, and yes, he was the head of the Roman Empire, but all human beings were connected, that all human beings shared an affinity, and a relationship, and an obligation to each other. In Book 654, he says, "What injures the hive injures the bee." What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. What's bad for the bee is bad for the hive. And this was a time of such immense cruelty, and selfishness, and indifference to what was happening elsewhere. Marcus Verius is saying, "No, your job as a human being is to care about other human beings, not just the ones immediately nearest to you

• 11:18Ryan Holiday?

  or related to you, but ones you'll never know, ones you'll never meet, ones who have never even been born." Stoicism does not make you a sociopath. If anything, it makes you care more about more people.