Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday

Wisdom Takes Work

Author: Ryan Holiday

Series: The Stoic Virtues

Genre: Non-fiction

Publish Date: October 2025

Read: November 2025

Favorite Quote: If you think there is nothing anyone can teach you, you are not just insufferable—you’re right. You will not learn anything… except the looming and painful lesson of failure.

Synopsis: The fourth book in The Stoic Virtues series, Wisdom Takes Work, deals with the virtue of, you guessed it, wisdom. Throughout the book, Holiday uses anecdotes, stories, and research to illustrate the importance of wisdom. More specifically, Holiday shows how one can never truly attain true wisdom without first accepting and embracing a lifelong student mentality. Important figures like Abe Lincoln and Elon Musk are profiled for their successes and failures in wisdom, respectively. Holiday also discusses the differences between intelligence, wisdom, ego, and confidence.

Why does this book beguile? Wisdom Takes Work might just be Holiday’s best work to date (although I am still quite partial to his book, Conspiracy*. In this fourth of four books, Holiday pulls no punches and calls out people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and others who have lost their way, while countering those stories with successes throughout history — and acknowledging how difficult it is to constantly combat one’s ego and truly embrace the ability to learn and grow.

Bookshop.Org Link*: Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. by Ryan Holiday

Amazon.com Link*: Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. by Ryan Holiday