Jordan B. Peterson Quotes: Widely admired for his raw and unfiltered cultural and political views, Jordan B Peterson is an acknowledged and eminent clinical psychologist, one of the most popular Youtube personalities, and a renowned professor at the University of Toronto. Born and brought up in Alberta, he acquired his bachelor’s degree in political science and Psychology from the University of Alberta, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from McGill University, and teaching and research at Harvard University. His most notable work came in 2018 when his book “12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos” was published and became a best-seller for so many weeks in numerous countries. His podcasts and Youtube videos garner millions of views and he has been labeled as the most influential intellectual in the western world. To dive deep into the unfathomable intelligence of Jordan B. Peterson, our compilation of Jordan Peterson quotes on success, truth, life, and love will open your eyes like nothing else.
Jordan Peterson Quotes
It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city. » Jordan B. Peterson
The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect. » Jordan B. Peterson
Abortion is clearly wrong. » Jordan B. Peterson
I don’t think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil. » Jordan B. Peterson
You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences. » Jordan B. Peterson
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self. » Jordan B. Peterson
Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open. » Jordan B. Peterson
Free speech is not just another value. It’s the foundation of Western civilization. » Jordan B. Peterson
Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell. » Jordan B. Peterson
When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don’t need to worry about the future. » Jordan B. Peterson
There were some great clinicians in the 20th century – great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius – there’s a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s. » Jordan B. Peterson
I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time – for 40 years – and they’re started by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory. » Jordan B. Peterson
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 B. Peterson
To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell. » Jordan B. Peterson
Life is very difficult. One of the most ancient of religious ideas that emerges everywhere, I would say, is that life is essentially suffering. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards. » Jordan B. Peterson
You can’t go backward in life. » Jordan B. Peterson
Become aware of your own insufficiency. » Jordan B. Peterson
The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant. » Jordan B. Peterson
It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words. » Jordan B. Peterson
I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest. » Jordan B. Peterson
Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you’re a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis. » Jordan B. Peterson
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. » Jordan B. Peterson
Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail? » Jordan B. Peterson
You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to. » Jordan B. Peterson
You can think of the entire Internet as a place where ideas embodied in cyberspace are having a war, and it’s not much different than the war of gods in heaven, which has been taking place since there’s been human beings. » Jordan B. Peterson
It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women. » Jordan B. Peterson
I’m interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification. » Jordan B. Peterson
We have to rediscover the eternal values and then live them out. » Jordan B. Peterson
If you want to occupy the C-suite or the top one-tenth of 1% in any organization, you have to be obsessively devoted to your career at the expense of everything else. And women look at that, and they think, ‘No.’ » Jordan B. Peterson
In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all. » Jordan B. Peterson
Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated. » Jordan B. Peterson
In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. » Jordan B. Peterson
You may say, ‘Well, dragons don’t exist.’ It’s, like, yes they do – the category ‘predator’ and the category ‘dragon’ are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists. » Jordan B. Peterson
The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity. » Jordan B. Peterson
People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story. » Jordan B. Peterson
The multiplication force of technology on cognitive differences is massive. » Jordan B. Peterson
It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate. » Jordan B. Peterson
You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you aare always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you. » Jordan B. Peterson
The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future. » Jordan B. Peterson
People have this capacity within them to set the world straight. » Jordan B. Peterson
The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences. » Jordan B. Peterson
I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree. » Jordan B. Peterson
Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate » Jordan B. Peterson
Always place your becoming above your current being. » Jordan B. Peterson
You can’t just slander someone, defame them, lie about them. You can’t incite people to crime. There’s all sorts of reasonable restrictions on free speech that are already codified in the British common-law system. » Jordan B. Peterson
I do believe that there are places where the mythological and the literal touch. » Jordan B. Peterson
You don’t get to choose not to pay a price, you only get to choose which price you pay » Jordan B. Peterson
So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom. » Jordan B. Peterson
I’m always surprised when people respond positively to what I am saying, given its seriousnessness and strange nature. » Jordan B. Peterson
The right-wingers don’t want to admit that for some people, there are no jobs; they think that conscientiousness in and of itself will do the trick. » Jordan B. Peterson
The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are. » Jordan B. Peterson
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 B. Peterson
It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world—a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one—is to fix yourself, » Jordan B. Peterson
I like working-class people, generally speaking. » Jordan B. Peterson
My publication record puts me in the top 0.5 percent of psychologists. » Jordan B. Peterson
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 B. Peterson
The secret to your existence is right in front of you. It manifests itself as all those things you know you should do, but are avoiding. » Jordan B. Peterson
I don’t really regard myself as a political figure. » Jordan B. Peterson
In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures. » Jordan B. Peterson
If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I’ll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing. » Jordan B. Peterson
if you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences—and infer the motivation. » Jordan B. Peterson
All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents. » Jordan B. Peterson
I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine. » Jordan B. Peterson
Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it. » Jordan B. Peterson
We believe that in reducing the scope and importance of our errors, we are properly humble; in truth, we are merely unwilling to bear the weight of our true responsibility. » Jordan B. Peterson
Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler. » Jordan B. Peterson
Consciousness is a mystery that faces the mystery of potential and transforms it into actuality. We do that with every choice we make. Our choices determine the destiny of the world. By making a choice, you alter the structure of reality. » Jordan B. Peterson
The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can. » Jordan B. Peterson
I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings. » Jordan B. Peterson
Sometimes it seems the only people willing to give advice in a relativistic society are those with the least to offer. » Jordan B. Peterson
Don’t use language instrumentally » Jordan B. Peterson
Worthlessness is the default condition. » Jordan B. Peterson
It’s a luxury to pursue what makes you happy; it’s a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful. » Jordan B. Peterson
If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends. » Jordan B. Peterson
And you must be cautious, because making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful. » Jordan B. Peterson
It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve. » Jordan B. Peterson
Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong? » Jordan B. Peterson
Our behavioral patterns are exceedingly complex, and psychology is a young science. The scope of our behavioral wisdom exceeds the breadth of our explicit interpretation. We act, even instruct, and yet do not understand. How can we do what we cannot explain? » Jordan B. Peterson
you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. » Jordan B. Peterson
When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia. » Jordan B. Peterson
Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living – and the Ideal shames us all. » Jordan B. Peterson
It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city. » Jordan B. Peterson
we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, » Jordan B. Peterson
Here’s a straightforward initial idea: rules should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Alternatively stated, bad laws drive out respect for good laws. This is the ethical—even legal—equivalent of Occam’s razor, the scientist’s conceptual guillotine, which states that the simplest possible hypothesis is preferable. » Jordan B. Peterson
One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity. » Jordan B. Peterson
We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate. » Jordan B. Peterson
But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there’s nothing freeing about that. » Jordan B. Peterson
In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie. » Jordan B. Peterson
The first: limit the rules. The second: Use the least force necessary to enforce those rules. » Jordan B. Peterson
that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life. » Jordan B. Peterson
There are so many ways that things can fall apart, or fail to work altogether, and it is always wounded people who are holding it together » Jordan B. Peterson
alongside our wish to be free of rules, we all search for structure. » Jordan B. Peterson
It isn’t precisely that people will fight for what they believe. They will fight, instead, to maintain the match between what they believe, what they expect, and what they desire. » Jordan B. Peterson