Jordan Peterson Quotes

And then Snow White has to wait for the Prince to come rescue her, and you think: "How sexist can you get, that story?" Well, seriously, because that's the way that that would be read in the modern world, like, "She doesn't need a prince to come rescue her." That's why Disney made Frozen, that absolutely appalling piece of rubbish.

Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power.

It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

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.

Stop saying those things that make you weak and ashamed. Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honour.

There are no innocuous ideologies. They're forms of pathological over simplification and they're also clubs, I mean the kind of clubs that you hit people with as well as the kind that you belong to... the advantage (to me) of being an ideologue is that I can explain everything, I can feel morally superior, and I know who my enemies are...and you know what you're supposed to do with enemies? They're not your friends, you move against them.

When you move, everything is up in the air, at least for a while. It’s stressful, but in the chaos there are new possibilities. People, including you, can’t hem you in with their old notions. You get shaken out of your ruts

To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure. When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing you don’t notice — it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos.

Perhaps, if we lived properly, we would be able to tolerate the weight of our own self-consciousness. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we could withstand the knowledge of our own fragility and mortality, without the sense of aggrieved victimhood that produces, first, resentment, then envy, and then the desire for vengeance and destruction. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we wouldn't have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own insufficiency and ignorance. Perhaps we could come to avoid those pathways to Hell — and we have seen in the terrible twentieth century just how real Hell can be.

Stop the discussion for a moment, and institute this rule: ‘Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.’” I have found this technique very useful, in my private life and in my practice. I routinely summarize what people have said to me, and ask them if I have understood properly.

That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.

Anyway, the fervent hope of every undisciplined person (even an undisciplined genius) is that his current worthlessness and stupidity is someone else's fault. If — in the best of cases — it is society's fault, then society can be made to pay. This sleight-of-hand maneuver transforms the undisciplined into the admirable rebel, at least in his own eyes, and allows him to seek unjustified revenge in the disguise of the revolutionary hero. A more absurd parody of heroic behavior can hardly be imagined.

Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything — anything — to defend ourselves against that return.

No one in the modern world may without objection express the opinion that existence would be bettered by the absence of Jews, blacks, Muslims, or Englishmen. Why, then, is it virtuous to propose that the planet might be better off, if there were fewer people on it? I can’t help but see a skeletal, grinning face, gleeful at the possibility of the apocalypse, hiding not so very far behind such statements. And why does it so often seem to be the very people standing so visibly against prejudice who so often appear to feel obligated to denounce humanity itself?

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act.