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There is a moment in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway to Meyer Wolfsheim, mentioning offhandedly that he is the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. The idea staggers Gatsby's idealistic young friend. Of course, Carraway knew the series had been thrown. But "if I had thought of it at all," he says, "I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain." It was unbelievable to ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Remember, then, if you deem what is by nature slavish to be free, and what is not your own to be yours, you will be shackled and miserable, blaming both gods and other people. But if you deem as your own only what is yours, and what belongs to others as truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or to stop you, you will find no one to blame or accuse, you will do nothing against your will, you will have no enemy, no one will h..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Apply yourself to thinking through difficulties--hard times can be softened, tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure." --SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND, 10.4b"
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Ryan Holiday |
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His path was in some ways traditional--Stanford to Stanford Law to judicial clerkship to high-powered law firm--but it was also marked by bouts of rebellion. At Stanford he created and published a radical conservative journal called The Stanford Review, then he wrote a book that railed against multiculturalism and "militant homosexuals" on campus, despite being both gay and foreign born. His friends thought he might become a political pundi..
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Ryan Holiday |
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The Count of Monte Cristo would put it better: "What a fool I was not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself!" Ah, but what dangerous business this is. This artificial hardening is a dangerous crossroads, a bargain with our primal forces that not everyone escapes or can emerge from with clean hands. William James knew that every man is "ready to be savage in some cause." The distinction, he said, between good peopl..
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Ryan Holiday |
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6bccc57
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It's far better that we become pragmatic and adaptable--able to do what we need to do anywhere, anytime. The place to do your work, to live the good life, is here.
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Ryan Holiday |
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f7fd73e
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Marcus reminded himself: "Don't await the perfection of Plato's Republic." He wasn't expecting the world to be exactly the way he wanted it to be, but Marcus knew instinctively, as the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper would later write, that "he alone can do good who knows what things are like and what their situation is."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Robert Caro has written that "power doesn't corrupt, it reveals."
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Ryan Holiday |
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cc40b6e
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This is a book for a world that has come to think like Nick Carraway, riding in disbelief through life on the wake of conspiracies we won't believe until we see, unable to comprehend why they happen and who makes them happen. This ignorance of how things really work is depressing to me. Because it opens us up to manipulation. It closes us off from opportunities to produce fruitful change and advance our own goals. It is time to grow up.
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Ryan Holiday |
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When personal gossip attains the dignity of print, and crowds the space available for matters of real interest to the community," future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, in a piece which formed the basis for what we now know as the "right to privacy," it "destroys at once robustness of thought and delicacy of feeling. No enthusiasm can flourish, no generous impulse can survive under its blighting..
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Ryan Holiday |
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4f848b9
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First, a slight of some kind, which grows into a larger dissatisfaction with the status quo. A sense that things should be different, and will be different, except for the worse, if something doesn't change. But then comes a second step, a weighing of the stakes. What if I do something about this? What might happen? What might happen if I do nothing? Which is riskier: to act or to ignore? History is uncertain on this question, as were the p..
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Ryan Holiday |
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6e94f0b
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It is just one word: Conspiracies. What follows is Machiavelli's guide for rising up against a powerful enemy, for ending the reign of a supposed tyrant, for protecting yourself against those who wish to do you harm. It is appropriate that such a book sits just within arm's reach of one of Thiel's wingback armchairs and not far from the chess set which occupies considerable amounts of his time. Something in these pages planted itself deep i..
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Ryan Holiday |
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hell am I to write it? My story is not particularly important for the lessons that follow, but I want to tell it briefly here at the beginning in order to provide some context. For I have experienced ego at each of its stages in my short life: Aspiration. Success. Failure. And back again and back again. When I was nineteen
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Ryan Holiday |
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Twenty-five hundred years ago, Thucydides would say that the three strongest motives for men were "fear, honor, and self-interest." Fear. Honor. Self-interest. All covered. Which is the truest of them for Thiel? Does it matter? Someone had begun to think seriously that something needed to be done and believed that he might be the person to do it."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Every conspiracy is a story of people. The protagonists of this one are two of the most distinctly unique personalities of their time, Nick Denton and Peter Thiel. Two characters who, not unlike the cowboys in your cliche western, found that the town--whether it was Silicon Valley or New York City or the world's stage--was not big enough for them to coexist. The gravitational pull of the two figures would bring dozens of other people into t..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life." --SENECA, THYESTES, 309"
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Ryan Holiday |
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The line from the Obamas was "When they go low, we go high." It's a dignified and impressive mantra, if only because for the most part, whether you liked them or not, it's hard to deny that they followed it. But the now cliche remark should not be taken conclusively, for it makes one dangerous omission. It forgets that from time to time in life, we might have to take someone out behind the woodshed. How we have lost this. How squeamish we h..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Remember: you're a free agent. When someone points out a legitimate flaw in your belief or in your actions, they're not criticizing you. They're presenting a better alternative. Accept it!
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Ryan Holiday |
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It's not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can.
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Ryan Holiday |
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The Russians call this maskirovka--the art of deception and confusion. It is as old as strategy itself. Undermine your enemy, Sun Tzu advised 2,500 years ago. "Subvert him, attack his morale, strike at his economy, corrupt him. Sow internal discord among his leaders; destroy him without fighting him." Call down the fog of war, he was telling conspirators and generals and swordsmen, let it descend on your opponent until they cannot see what ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin," Montaigne had inscribed on the beam of his ceiling."
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Ryan Holiday |
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As the philosopher and writer Paul Valery explained in 1938, "A poet's function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others." That is, his job is to produce work."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder. --SHAKESPEARE
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Ryan Holiday |
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When I look up in the universe, I know I'm small, but I'm also big. I'm big because I'm connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.
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Ryan Holiday |
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This is the nature of the American legal system, and of conspiracy as well. It's slow, adversarial. Moral quandaries and personal issues are reduced to brief moments and decided on small points of law. Even a winning case will likely see as many setbacks as it does victories, and it falls upon the constitution of the players to weather the former to get to the latter. And this isn't even the real legal battle--these are just arguments over ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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We tell ourselves that we need the right setup before we finally buckle down and get serious. Or we tell ourselves that some vacation or time alone will be good for a relationship or an ailment. This is self-deceit at its finest. It's far better that we become pragmatic and adaptable--able to do what we need to do anywhere, anytime. The place to do your work, to live the good life, is here
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Ryan Holiday |
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The essayist and investor Paul Graham, a peer and rival of Peter Thiel's, has charted the trajectory of a start-up, with all its ups and downs. After the initial bump of media attention, the rush of excitement from the unexpected success, Graham says that the founders enter a phase where the novelty begins to wear off, and they quickly descend from their early euphoria into what he calls the "trough of sorrow." A start-up launches with its ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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A great destiny, Seneca reminds us, is great slavery.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Machiavelli writes that a conspiracy without any coconspirators is not a conspiracy. It's just a crime. This is also basic legal principle. If you kill someone by yourself, in the heat of the moment, it's murder. If you meticulously plan it with someone else beforehand, that's conspiracy. Lee Harvey Oswald almost certainly assassinated John F. Kennedy by himself. What he hoped would happen as a result is unclear. John Wilkes Booth conspired..
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Ryan Holiday |
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a5c5d57
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The historian E. P. Thompson said that history never happens as the actors suspect, that history is instead the "record of unintended consequences." The assassination of Julius Caesar does not restore the Roman Republic, it leads to a brutal civil war and, at the end, another emperor. The Allied powers destroy Hitler and Germany but empower Russia and Stalin and create a new Cold War to follow the conclusion of the hot one. There is always ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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There is a scene in the movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. At the beginning, in the woods, Robert Ford, played by Casey Affleck, illustrates this phenomenon. He thinks the outlaw Jesse James is a great man. He thinks that he, himself, is a great man, too. He wants someone to recognize that in him. He wants someone to give him an opportunity--a project through which he can prove his worth. It just happens that ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Men, the philosopher's lecture-hall is a hospital--you shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure, but pain, for you aren't well when you enter it." --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.23.30"
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Ryan Holiday |
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In the years he conspired against Gawker, Thiel would come to see the U.S. legal system differently. He later said that, before the case against Gawker, he had believed that the problem in America was too many lawsuits and too many lawyers. Like many media outlets, Gawker's legal strategy had been to lean into that understanding--to be the black hole of time and money whose event horizon no one could afford to confront. With his immense res..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Peter thought he'd be greeted as a liberator, that Gawker was a scourge that once eliminated would allow for open, collaborative discussion. If anything, the opposite has happened. The candidate he helped put in office embodies many of the bullying traits that Thiel claimed to abhor. Trump would also come to actively stymie expression, threatening to "open up" the libel laws in this country and pressuring NFL owners to fire the players who ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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With patience and resources," Mr. A would come to say often on his weekly calls with Peter, "we can do almost anything." Tolstoy had a motto for Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov in War and Peace--" Patience and Time." "There is nothing stronger than those two," he said, ". . . they will do it all." In 1812 and in real life, Kutuzov gave Napoleon an abject lesson in the truth of that during a long Russian winter. The target, Nick Denton, is not..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Once one forges oneself into a hammer of justice and feels the power of crushing one's enemies, driving them before one and taking their possessions as one's own, does one become addicted to it? It can become a cycle without end. It can change you, ruin you. One of the worst things that can ever happen to a leader is to unconsciously associate resistance and criticism with opportunity. When everyone tells you you're wrong and you turn out t..
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Ryan Holiday |
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He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears," wrote Seneca,"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Try praying differently, and see what happens: Instead of asking for 'a way to sleep with her,' try asking for 'a way to stop desiring to sleep with her.' Instead of 'a way to get rid of him,' try asking for 'a way to not crave his demise.' Instead of 'a way to not lose my child,' try asking for 'a way to lose my fear of it.' " --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.40.(6)" --
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Ryan Holiday |
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Letters used to be signed "Deo volente"--God willing. Because who knew what would happen?"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life.
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Ryan Holiday |
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the old Celtic saying tells us, "See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom."
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Ryan Holiday |
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How you handle even minor adversity might seem like nothing, but, in fact, it reveals everything.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Plutarch's reflection that we don't "so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience [we have] of things."
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Ryan Holiday |