It is necessary to be strong in the face of death, because death is intrinsic to life. It is for this reason that I tell my students: aim to be the p… - Jordan Peterson

There’s a worthy and noble ambition: strength in the face of adversity. That is very different from the wish for a life free of trouble.

The people who wrote and edited the Bible, for example, weren’t scientists. They couldn’t have been scientists, even if they had wanted to be. The viewpoints, methods and practices of science hadn’t been formulated when the Bible was written. Religion is instead about proper behaviour. It’s about what Plato called “the Good.” A genuine religious acolyte isn’t trying to formulate accurate ideas about the objective nature of the world (although he may be trying to do that too). He’s striving, instead, to be a “good person.” It may be the case that to him “good” means nothing but “obedient” — even blindly obedient. Hence the classic liberal Western enlightenment objection to religious belief: obedience is not enough. But it’s at least a start (and we have forgotten this): You cannot aim yourself at anything if you are completely undisciplined and untutored.

Michelangelo’s great perfect marble David cries out to its observer: “You could be more than you are.

Alcohol temporarily lifts the terrible burden of self-consciousness from people. Drunk people know about the future, but they don’t care about it. That’s exciting. That’s exhilarating. Drunk people can party like there’s no tomorrow. But, because there is a tomorrow — most of the time — drunk people also get in trouble.