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Jordan Peterson
130 quotes
“We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown—and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you can bite, you generally don't have to.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Standards of better or worse are not illusory or unnecessary. If you hadn’t decided that what you are doing right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn’t be doing it. The idea of a value-free choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgments are a precondition for action. Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Was it really a good thing, for example, to so dramatically liberalize the divorce laws in the 1960s? It’s not clear to me that the children whose lives were destabilized by the hypothetical freedom this attempt at liberation introduced would say so. Horror and terror lurk behind the walls provided so wisely by our ancestors. We tear them down at our peril. We skate, unconsciously, on thin ice, with deep, cold waters below, where unimaginable monsters lurk.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is little difference between sacrifice and work. They are also both uniquely human. Sometimes, animals act as if they are working, but they are really only following the dictates of their nature. Beavers build dams. They do so because they are beavers, and beavers build dams. They don't think, "Yeah, but I'd rather be on a beach in Mexico with my girlfriend," while they're doing it.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freud was, after all, a genius. You can tell that because people still hate him.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People organize their brains with conversation. If they don't have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had to force myself to concentrate, and to breathe, and to keep from saying and meaning “to hell with it” during the endless months that I was possessed by dread and terror. And I was barely able to do it. More than half the time I believed that I was going to die in one of the many hospitals in which I resided. And I believe that if I had fallen prey to resentment, for example, I would have perished once and for all—and that I am fortunate to have avoided such a fate.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much that is great starts small, ignorant, and useless. […] But today’s beginner is tomorrow’s master.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You do not choose what interests you. It chooses you. Something manifests itself out of the darkness as compelling, as worth living for; following that, something moves us further down the road, to the next meaningful manifestation—and so it goes, as we continue to seek, develop, grow, and thrive. It is a perilous journey, but it is also the adventure of our lives. Think of pursuing someone you love: catch them or not, you change in the process.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who dares wins—if he does not perish. And who wins also makes himself irresistibly desirable and attractive, not least because of the development of character that adventure inevitably produces. And this is what makes us forever more than rabbits.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is the nature of our ancestors: immensely courageous hunters, defenders, shepherds, voyagers, inventors, warriors, and founders of cities and states. That is the father you could rescue; the ancestor you could become.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a high goal, a mountain peak, a star that shines in the darkness, beckoning above the horizon. Its mere existence gives you hope—and that is the meaning without which you cannot live.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have been telling [young people] for decades to demand what they are owed by society. We have been implying that the important meanings of their lives will be given to them because of such demands, when we should have been doing the opposite: letting them know that the meaning that sustains life in all its tragedy and disappointment is to be found in shouldering a noble burden.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps communism may even have been a viable solution to the problems of the unequal distribution of wealth that characterized the industrial age, if all of the hypothetically oppressed were good people and all of the evil was to be found, as hypothesized, in their bourgeoisie overlords. Unfortunately for the communists, a substantial proportion of the oppressed were incapable, unconscientious, unintelligent, licentious, power mad, violent, resentful, and jealous, while a substantial proportion of the oppressors were educated, able, creative, intelligent, honest, and caring.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like God, however, ideology is dead. The bloody excesses of the twentieth century killed it.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you aim at nothing, you become plagued by everything.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To write something long, sophisticated, and coherent means, at least in part, to become more complex, articulate, and deeper in personality.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the bringing together of a warring multiplicity under the unifying doctrines of Christianity that civilized Europe.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although Christ commits many acts that might be considered revolutionary, as we discussed in Rule I, He is nonetheless explicitly portrayed in the Gospels as the master of tradition.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Making something beautiful is difficult, but it is amazingly worthwhile. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful—even one thing—then you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can begin to expand that relationship out into other elements of your life and the world. That is an invitation to the divine. That is the reconnection with the immortality of childhood, and the true beauty and majesty of the Being you can no longer see. You must be daring to try that.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I exposed myself to a larger number of paintings, I like to think, than anyone else in history. For at least four years, starting in 2001, I searched eBay, looking at roughly a thousand paintings a day, seeking the one or two in that number that were of genuine quality.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty leads you back to what you have lost. Beauty reminds you of what remains forever immune to cynicism. Beauty beckons in a manner that straightens your aim. Beauty reminds you that there is lesser and greater value. Many things make life worth living: love, play, courage, gratitude, work, friendship, truth, grace, hope, virtue, and responsibility. But beauty is among the greatest of these.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is what happens two people fall under the spell of love. For a while, both become better than they were, and see that, but then that magic fades away. Both receive that experience as a gift. Both have their eyes open and can see what is visible to no one else. Such love is a glimpse of what could be, if the relationship remained true. It is delivered as a gift initially, from fate, but requires tremendous effort to realize and maintain. And once that is understood, the goal is clear.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Romance requires trust—and the deeper the trust, the deeper the possibility for romance.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That ghostly figure, the ideal union of what is best in both personalities, should be constantly regarded as the ruler of the marriage—and, indeed, as something as close to divine as might be practically approached by fallible individuals.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are three fundamental states of social being: tyranny (you do what I want), slavery (I do what you want), or negotiation.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have camped where the grizzly bears were plentiful. It is nice that they are on the planet and all that, but I prefer my grizzlies shy, not too hungry, and far enough away to be picturesque.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think it is reasonable to posit that it is often the people who have had too easy a time—who have been pampered and elevated falsely in their self-esteem—who adopt the role of victim and the mien of resentment.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grief must be a reflection of love. It is perhaps the ultimate proof of love. Grief is an uncontrollable manifestation of your belief that the lost person’s existence, limited and flawed as it might have been, was worthwhile, despite the limitations and flaws even of life itself.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The motivation that drives the commission of the worst human atrocities is an inevitable social consequence of the refusal of the self-conscious individual to make the sacrifices appropriate to establishing a harmonious life, and their consequent degeneration into a kind of murderous and resentment-filled rage propagating endlessly through its variations in society until everything comes to an end.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tragedy vs Evil" (5th Biennial International Conference on Personal Meaning, July 24-27, 2008)
“You want to have a meaningful life? Everything you do matters. That's the definition of a meaningful life. But everything you do matters. So you're going to have to carry that with you.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You use the observation of your own capability to bear responsibility, to buttress yourself against the terrors of being finite. You say, "Weak and miserable as I am, I can still stand up to the terrible tragedy of life and prevail!" And that's good enough.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think the idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it's not because white people aren't privileged. You know, we have all sorts of privileges, and most people have privileges of all sorts, and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them, I would say. But the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group—there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that. It's absolutely abhorrent.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing more useful in combating the tragedy of life than to struggle with all your soul on behalf of the good.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2017/04/10: Harvard Talk: Postmodernism & the Mask of Compassion
“The logical conclusion of intersectionality is individuality. There's so many different ways of categorizing people's advantages and disadvantages, that if you take that all the way out to the end you say, "Well, the individual is the ultimate minority"—and that's exactly right. And that's exactly what the West discovered. The intersectionalists will get there if they don't kill everyone first.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege talk, 3rd November 2017
“{{Cite tweet |user=jordanbpeterson |number=1633882580746653696 |date=9 March 2023 |title=There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jordan B. Peterson: The earliest political memory I have, it was when Robert Kennedy was shot. I don't know how old I was, probably four or five. I watched his funeral and I thought, "I'm going to have a funeral like that." [question from off-camera]: What made you think you would have a funeral like that? Jordan B. Peterson: I have no idea—I have no idea why I thought that. [question from off-camera]: What struck you about the funeral? Jordan B. Peterson: That it was—well, that it was a very large public event. That there was a lot of grief that was associated with it. That was the first thing that really, kind of, had an impact on me, I suppose, that was part of the outside political world, but I was pretty young when that happened.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Rise of Jordan Peterson (2019)
“You might think, "Well, compassion is a virtue." Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child—hey, great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question is: In these societies, cross-culturally, who is elevated to the status of elder? And you might say 'Well, it's the roughest, toughest, most dominant chimp, oppressive, patriarchal male.' and that actually happens to not be the case at all. And so what you do see is that productive males who are older, they have to be productive, who are simultaneously generous and reciprocal, and are recognized as such in their communities, hold the status of authority and help govern properly. And so we could say that there's no evidence whatsoever on the scientific or anthropological front that the doctrine that the prime human motivation for the construction of social relations is power. And I would add to that further that if you think that power is the fundamental motivation of humankind, that is a confession not an observation. And so look out for people who make that claim because they're making that claim to justify to themselves their own use of psychopathic and narcissistic social mediation strategies. And so I don't see that the leftists who make the claim that power is the fundamental motivation have a shred of evidence on their side sociologically, scientifically, anthropologically, politically, economically, theologically or ethically.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've tried to maintain a relatively balanced view of the excesses on both sides of the political spectrum, but one thing I have clearly experienced repeatedly is that the Left will shun and exclude to a degree that's almost unknown on the Right. I've never had anyone on the Right, that I've talked to, refuse to talk to a hypothetical guest, for example. And I've had people on the Left, they just do that all the time. And I don't get that exactly. I think maybe it has to do with the association in personality between agreeableness and Leftist's proclivity. So the socialist types, the Lefties, are technically more agreeable. And I think maybe among agreeable people, if you don't go along with the agreeable game you are much more likely to be categorized as a predator.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Imposing Limits on the Woke? | Christopher Rufo | EP 335" (at 25m53s), Jordan B Peterson on YouTube, 27 February 2023.
“The kids are starting to burn this place and to trash it. They're dragging a grand piano down the stairs. It's the destruction of high culture, about which they're nothing but cynical, because they don't believe that hard work and sacrifice can produce something of any value. They want to bring it down and destroy it. You can see it in the story of Cain and Abel. Abel is hard working and everyone likes him, and he makes the proper sacrifices, so his life goes really well. And that's part of the reason that Cain hates him. He's jealous and resentful, but worse than that—if you're not doing very well and you're around someone who is doing very well it's painful, because the mere fact of their Being judges you. And so it's very easy to want to destroy that ideal so that you don't have to live with the terrible consequences of seeing it embodied in front of you. And so part of the reason that people want to tear things down is so that they don't have anything to contrast themselves against and to feel bad. And that's exactly what's happening here. Kids are destroying all of this culture, because the fact that it exists judges them.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2017 Maps of Meaning 04: Marionettes and Individuals (Part 3)
“You can't have the conversation about rights without the conversation about responsibility, because your rights are my responsibility. That's what they are, technically, so you just can't have only half of that discussion. And we're only having half of that discussion. Then the question is, "Well, what are you leaving out if you're only having that half of the discussion?" And the answer is, "Well, you're leaving out responsibility." And then the question is, "Well, what are you leaving out if you're leaving out responsibility?" And the answer might be: "Well, maybe you're leaving out the meaning of life." Here you are, suffering away. What makes it worthwhile? Rights? It's almost impossible to describe how bad an idea that is. Responsibility: that's what gives life meaning. Lift a load. Then you can tolerate yourself. Look at yourself: you're useless, easily hurt, easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? Pick something up and carry it. Make it heavy enough so that you can think, yah, well, useless as I am, at least I can move that from there to there. For men, there's nothing but responsibility. Women have their sets of responsibilities: they're not the same. Women have to take primary responsibility for having infants, at least, and also for caring for them. They're structured differently than men for biological necessity. Women know what they have to do; men have to figure out what they have to do. And if they have nothing worth living for, then they stay Peter Pan—and why the hell not? The alternative to valued responsibility is impulsive, low-class pleasure. Why lift a load if there's nothing in it for you? And that's what we're doing to men and boys that's a very bad idea. "You're pathological and oppressive." "Fine, then! Why the hell am I going to play? If I get no credit for bearing responsibility, then you can be sure I won't bear any." But then your life is useless and meaningless, and you're full of self-contempt and nihilism, and that's not good. And so that's what I think is going on at a deeper level with regard to men needing this direction. A man has to decide that he's going to do something: he has to decide that.”
Jordan Peterson (born 1962) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2017 Maps of Meaning 11: The Flood and the Tower