Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, Youtuber, author, and professor in psychology who got famous with his YouTube videos, then ended up published the book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos in 2018, which was a bestseller in multiple countries. His most recent book is called Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. Jordan Peterson is becoming a worldwide phenomenon due to the attention he’s getting as a public intellectual. 

Here are 235 Jordan Peterson Quotes that’ll transform your life:

1. “Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.” – Jordan Peterson

2. “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 Peterson

3. “It’s better to do something badly than to not do it at all.” – Jordan Peterson

4. “When should you push back against oppression, despite the danger? When you start nursing secret fantasies of revenge; when your life is being poisoned and your imagination fills with the wish to devour and destroy.” – Jordan Peterson

5. “We may not exactly be God, but we’re not exactly nothing, either.” – Jordan Peterson

6. “Each person’s private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous.” – Jordan Peterson

7. “There are some games you don’t get to play unless you are all in.” – Jordan Peterson

8. “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 Peterson

9. “Chaos can be too much.” – Jordan Peterson

10. “The only time ‘no’ ever means ‘no’ in the absence of violence is when it is uttered by one civilized person to another.” – Jordan Peterson

11. “The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.” – Jordan Peterson

12. “You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person.” – Jordan Peterson

 

13. “We transform the manifold possibilities of the future into the actualities of past and present.” – Jordan Peterson

 

14. “We are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness.” – Jordan Peterson

15. “Don’t avoid something frightening if it stands in your way.” – Jordan Peterson

16. “Trust is an unbelievably powerful economic force maybe the most powerful economic force.” – Jordan Peterson

17. “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

18. “It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city.” – Jordan Peterson

19. “Tyranny feeds on lies.” – Jordan Peterson

20. “Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.” – Jordan Peterson

21. “Kindness is the excuse that social justice warriors use when they want to exercise control over what other people think and say.” – Jordan Peterson

22. “Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.” – Jordan Peterson

23. “Bad laws drive out respect for good laws.” – Jordan Peterson

24. “Dress like the person you want to be. Sometimes you have to act out the person you want to be before you become it.” – Jordan Peterson

25. “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 honor.” – Jordan Peterson

26. “We cannot navigate, without something to aim at, and while we are in this world, we must always navigate.” – Jordan Peterson

27. “The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.” – Jordan Peterson

28. “Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.” – Jordan Peterson

29. “If you fulfill your obligations everyday, you don’t need to worry about the future.”- Jordan Peterson

30. “Loyalty must be negotiated fairly and honestly.” – Jordan Peterson

31. “We must each tell the truth, and repair what is in disrepair, and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It’s asking a lot. It’s asking for everything.” – Jordan Peterson

32. “You can’t long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are learning what you still need to know.” – Jordan Peterson

33. “Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living. And the ideal shames us all.” – Jordan Peterson

34. “You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.” – Jordan Peterson

35. “The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success, and you can’t get more like nature than that. In fact, it’s the very definition of nature.” – Jordan Peterson

36. “Choose your destination and articulate your being.” – Jordan Peterson

37. “When you educate someone you teach them how to use language to arm them; Straighten them out; Organize them; Elevate them and you ennoble them and then they’re not misshapen half-carved blocks of humanity.” – Jordan Peterson

 

38. “You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t overestimate your self-knowledge.” – Jordan Peterson

 

39. “Don’t ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.” – Jordan Peterson

40. “Our society faces the increasing call to deconstruct its stabilizing traditions to include smaller and smaller numbers of people who do not or will not fit into the categories upon which even our perceptions are based.” – Jordan Peterson

41. “Cooperation is for safety, security, and companionship. Competition is for personal growth and status.” – Jordan Peterson

42. “There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.” – Jordan Peterson

43. “Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care of yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality.” – Jordan Peterson

44. “A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of life—lie.” – Jordan Peterson

45. “Can you imagine yourself in 10 years if instead of avoiding the things you know you should do, you actually did them every single day – that’s powerful.” – Jordan Peterson

46. “We have learned to live together and organize our complex societies slowly and incrementally, over vast stretches of time, and we do not understand with sufficient exactitude why what we are doing works.” – Jordan Peterson

47. “It’s a luxury to pursue what makes you happy; it’s a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.” – Jordan Peterson

48. “All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.” – Jordan Peterson

49. “You should never give up the better that resides within for the security you already have, and certainly not when you have already caught a glimpse—an undeniable glimpse—of something beyond.” – Jordan Peterson

50. “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 Peterson

51. “Maybe your misery is the weapon you brandish in your hatred for those who rose upward while you waited and sank. Maybe your misery is your attempt to prove the world’s injustice, instead of the evidence of your own sin, your missing of the mark, your conscious refusal to strive and live.” – Jordan Peterson

52. “Make friends with people who want the best for you.” – Jordan Peterson

53. “Life that is pure law becomes sterile, equally unbearable.” – Jordan Peterson

54. “Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement.” – Jordan Peterson

55. “It takes careful observation, and education, and reflection, and communication with others, just to scratch the surface of your beliefs.” – Jordan Peterson

56. “If you’re going to be successful you need to be smart, conscientious, and tough.” – Jordan Peterson

57. “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 Peterson

58. “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 Peterson

59. “If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not.” – Jordan Peterson

60. “Everything you value is a product of unimaginably lengthy developmental processes, personal, cultural, biological.” – Jordan Peterson

 

61. “Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness.” – Jordan Peterson

 

62. “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” – Jordan Peterson

63. “Say what you mean, so that you can find out what you mean. Act out what you say, so you can find out what happens. Then pay attention. Note your errors. Articulate them. Strive to correct them. That is how you discover the meaning of your life.” – Jordan Peterson

64. “If you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from fear of death.” – Jordan Peterson

65. “You have to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play.” – Jordan Peterson

66. “Consciousness is a mystery that faces the mystery of potential and transforms it into actuality. We do that with every choice we make.” – Jordan Peterson

67. “You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction.” – Jordan Peterson

68. “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

69. “You can only find out what you actually believe, rather than what you think you believe, by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.” – Jordan Peterson

70. “If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city.” – Jordan Peterson

71. “Experience is the best teacher, and the worst experiences teach the best lessons.” – Jordan Peterson

72.“When you decide to learn about your faults so that they can be rectified, you open a line of communication with the source of all revelatory thought. Maybe that’s the same thing as consulting your conscience. Maybe that’s the same thing, in some manner, as a discussion with God.” – Jordan Peterson

 

73. “In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.” – Jordan Peterson

 

74. “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.” – Jordan Peterson

75. “The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power.” – Jordan Peterson

76. “So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around.” – Jordan Peterson

77. “If you stand still you fall backwards, you cannot stand still, because the world moves away from you if you stand still. And there is no stasis. There is only backwards.” – Jordan Peterson

78. “There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient.” – Jordan Peterson

79. “The domination of chaos or sterility equally breeds murderous resentment and hatred.” – Jordan Peterson

80. “It is necessary to be strong in the face of death, because death is intrinsic to life.” – Jordan Peterson

81. “Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past.” – Jordan Peterson

82. “If you tell enough lies, often enough, the truth will become entirely hidden from you, and then you are in hell.” – Jordan Peterson

83. “It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.” – Jordan Peterson

84. “If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward.” – Jordan Peterson

85. “Sometimes, it seems the only people willing to give advice in a relativistic society are those with the least to offer.” – Jordan Peterson

86. “If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.”- Jordan Peterson

87. “Aim to be the person at your father’s funeral that everyone, in their grief and misery, can rely on.” – Jordan Peterson

88. “If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” – Jordan Peterson

89. “It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order.” – Jordan Peterson

90. “Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.” – Jordan Peterson

91. “Cultivating judgment about the difference between virtue and vice is the beginning of wisdom—something that can never be out of date.” – Jordan Peterson

92. “If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.” – Jordan Peterson

93. “Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology. It’s part of an evil triad—arrogance, deceit, and resentment.” – Jordan Peterson

94. “People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results.” – Jordan Peterson

95. “You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain for yourself; so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful, and cruel.” – Jordan Peterson

96. “If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.” – Jordan Peterson

97. “Confront the chaos of being.” – Jordan Peterson

98. “Altering our ways of social being carelessly in the name of some ideological shibboleth is likely to produce far more trouble than good, given the suffering that even small revolutions generally produce.” – Jordan Peterson

 

99. “People that can stand up, stand around and maneuver through the world, contribute properly to the community and keep the world oriented between chaos and order.” – Jordan Peterson

 

100. “Treat yourself like you would someone you’re responsible for helping.” – Jordan Peterson

101. “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

102. “What can be truly loved about a person is inseparable from their limitations.” – Jordan Peterson

103. “Worthlessness is the default condition.” – Jordan Peterson

104. “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” – Jordan Peterson

105. “We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them.” – Jordan Peterson

106. “Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned.” – Jordan Peterson

107. “Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion.” – Jordan Peterson

108. “In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual.” – Jordan Peterson

109. “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 Peterson

110. “When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” – Jordan Peterson

111. “One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.” – Jordan Peterson

112. “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 Peterson

113. “You might be winning, but you’re not growing; and growing might be the most important form of winning.” – Jordan Peterson

114. “Take aim against a sea of troubles.” – Jordan Peterson

115. “Not everyone who is failing is a victim, and not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise, although many do, and many manage it.” – Jordan Peterson

116. “The fact that power plays a role in human motivation does not mean that it plays the only role, or even the primary role. Beware of single cause interpretations, and beware the people who purvey them.” – Jordan Peterson

117. “Don’t use language instrumentally.” – Jordan Peterson

118. “It’s easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today’s cheap pleasures.” – Jordan Peterson

119. “The fundamental moral question is not how to shelter children completely from misadventure and failure so they never experience any fear or pain, but how to maximize their learning so that useful knowledge may be gained with minimal cost.” – Jordan Peterson

 

120. “Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated.” – Jordan Peterson

 

121. “Men don’t struggle for power. They elect the most competent.” – Jordan Peterson

122. “Alongside our wish to be free of rules, we all search for structure.” – Jordan Peterson

123. “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.” – Jordan Peterson

124. “The truth is a terrible thing, but not when you compare it with falsehood.” – Jordan Peterson

125. “Be good company when something fun is happening, so that you’re invited for the fun.” – Jordan Peterson

126. “You need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood, and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering.” – Jordan Peterson

127. “Truth is the handmaiden of love.” – Jordan Peterson

128. “Face the demands of life voluntarily. Respond to a challenge, instead of bracing for catastrophe.” – Jordan Peterson

129. “The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.” – Jordan Peterson

130. “Territory matters, and there is little difference between territorial rights and social status. It is often a matter of life and death.” – Jordan Peterson

131. “It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.” – Jordan Peterson

132. “There’s a worthy and noble ambition—strength in the face of adversity.” – Jordan Peterson

133. “Human female choosiness is also why we are very different from the common ancestor we shared with our chimpanzee cousins, while the latter are very much the same.” – Jordan Peterson

134. “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.” – Jordan Peterson

135. “The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities.” – Jordan Peterson

136. “You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would.” – Jordan Peterson

137. “You don’t get to choose not to pay a price, you only get to choose which price you pay.” – Jordan Peterson

138. “We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world.” – Jordan Peterson

139. “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 Peterson

140. “Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others.” – Jordan Peterson

141. “You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do.” – Jordan Peterson

142. “Pursuit of individual interest means hearkening to this spirit’s call—means journeying outside the protective walls of childhood dependence and adolescent group identification; means also returning to and rejuvenation of society.” – Jordan Peterson

143. “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 Peterson

144. “If someone is making everyone around them miserable and you’d like to know why, their motive may simply be to make everyone around them miserable including themselves.” – Jordan Peterson

145. “If you can think and speak and write, you are absolutely deadly, nothing can get in your way.” – Jordan Peterson

146. “Most men do not meet female human standards.” – Jordan Peterson

147. “You can do an awful lot by writing down what happened to you and thinking it through.” – Jordan Peterson

148. “Specify your destination, and chart your course.” – Jordan Peterson

149. “If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.” – Jordan Peterson

150. “You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!” – Jordan Peterson

151. “Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world.” – Jordan Peterson

152. “Women’s proclivity to say no, more than any other force, has shaped our evolution into the creative, industrious, upright, large-brained creatures that we are.” – Jordan Peterson

153. “There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrity, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.” – Jordan Peterson

154. “Those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly an unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?” – Jordan Peterson

155. “Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.” – Jordan Peterson

156. “Do not allow yourself to be arrogant and resentful.” – Jordan Peterson

 

157. “Why do dragons hoard gold? Because the things you most need is always to be found where you least want to look.” – Jordan Peterson

 

158. “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.” – Jordan Peterson

159. “You’re always looking for new information in the off chance that somebody who doesn’t agree with you will tell you something you couldn’t have figured out on your own! It’s a completely different way of looking at the world. It’s the antithesis of opinionated.” – Jordan Peterson

160. “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.” – Jordan Peterson

161. “Devout adherence to the dictates of interest—assuming a suitably disciplined character—therefore ensures stabilization and renewal of personality and world.” – Jordan Peterson

162. “We require rules, standards, values— alone and together. We’re pack animals, beasts of burden. We must bear a load, to justify our miserable existence.” – Jordan Peterson

163. “Our choices determine the destiny of the world. By making a choice, you alter the structure of reality.” – Jordan Peterson

164. “Relativism’s closest approximation to virtue is tolerance.” – Jordan Peterson

165. “You should be humble enough to understand that if you can’t order your own life, you shouldn’t be trying to order anything more complicated than that.” – Jordan Peterson

166. “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.” – Jordan Peterson

167. “The truth is something that burns, it burns off deadwood and people don’t like having their deadwood burnt off often because they’re 95% deadwood.” – Jordan Peterson

168. “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.” – Jordan Peterson

169. “If you don’t say what you think, then you kill your unborn self.” – Jordan Peterson

170. “Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.” – Jordan Peterson

171. “Every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God.” – Jordan Peterson

172. “It would be good to make the world a better place.” – Jordan Peterson

173. “There are many systems of interaction between the brain, body and social world that can get caught in positive feedback loops.” – Jordan Peterson

174. “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 Peterson

175. “You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.” – Jordan Peterson

176. “Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.” – Jordan Peterson

177. “Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?” – Jordan Peterson

178. “Intolerance of others’ views—no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be—is not simply wrong. In a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse. It is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or possibly dangerous.” – Jordan Peterson

179. “Ask yourself what you would require to be motivated to undertake the job, honestly, and listen to the answer.” – Jordan Peterson

180. “To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again—in great ways and small.” – Jordan Peterson

181. “Weak and miserable as I am, I can still stand up to the terrible tragedy of life and prevail.” – Jordan Peterson

182. “With life no matter what you do, you are all in. This is going to kill you. You might as well play the most magnificent game you can. Because do you have anything better to do?” – Jordan Peterson

183. “If you dare to do the most difficult thing you can conceptualize your life will work out better than it will if you do anything.” – Jordan Peterson

184. “Even if it were possible to permanently banish everything threatening—everything dangerous and therefore, everything challenging and interesting—that would mean only that another danger would emerge—that of permanent human infantilism and absolute uselessness.” – Jordan Peterson

185. “You would neither betray a friend, nor deal falsely and deceitfully in business, politics or love. However, your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition—radically, fatally insufficient.” – Jordan Peterson

186. “It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.” – Jordan Peterson

187. “Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects.” – Jordan Peterson

 

188. “Anything that you let win, grows. Don’t practice what you don’t want to become.” – Jordan Peterson

 

189. “Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived.” – Jordan Peterson

190. “If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That’s the purpose of memory. It’s not to remember the past. It’s to stop the same damn thing from happening over and over.” – Jordan Peterson

191. “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 are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.” – Jordan Peterson

192. “True thinking is rare—just like true listening.” – Jordan Peterson

193. “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 Peterson

194. “Admit to what you want. Tell those around you who you are. Narrow and gaze attentively, and move forward, forthrightly. Be precise in your speech.” – Jordan Peterson

195. “Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you, and make you anxious and unhappy, and hard to get along with; and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse.” – Jordan Peterson

196. “Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to identification with the devil.” – Jordan Peterson

197. “There’s almost nothing better than character development. And aiming at having a good character is the highest aim, and it’s the aim that will provide the most meaning in your life.” – Jordan Peterson

198. “In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition, religion, and even nation-centered cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict.” – Jordan Peterson

199. “Our behar beings in your care competen

mplex, and psychology is a young science.” – Jordan Peterson

200. “It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them.” – Jordan Peterson

201. “Do you want to make your children safe or strong?” – Jordan Peterson

202. “The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it.” – Jordan Peterson

203. “Once you become consciously aware that you, yourself, are vulnerable, you understand the nature of human vulnerability in general.” – Jordan Peterson

204. “To when they refuse responsibility for their livess the cause—that is Hell.” – Jordan Peterson

205. “It’s all very well to think the meaning of life is happiness, but what happens when you’re unhappy? Happiness is a great side effect. When it comes, accept it gratefully. But it’s fleeting and unpredictable.” – Jordan Peterson

206. “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). – Jordan Peterson

207. “We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.” – Jordan Peterson

208. “When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.” – Jordan Peterson

209. “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 Peterson

210. “Artists are going out into the unknown and representing it imaginably. So what does that painting mean? Well, if the artists knew that, he’d just write it down. The art is beyond what is articulable; otherwise it’s just propaganda.” – Jordan Peterson

211. “A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has it under voluntary control.” – Jordan Peterson

212. “You should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you.” – Jordan Peterson

213. “Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities.” – Jordan Peterson

214. “You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.” – Jordan Peterson

215. “When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future. Then you disturb others, in the depths of their souls, where they understand that their cynicism and immobility are unjustifiable.” – Jordan Peterson

216. “What you aim at determines what you see.” – Jordan Peterson

217. “Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good.” – Jordan Peterson

218. “A leader gives articulation of the imagination of the population.” – Jordan Peterson

219. “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 Peterson

 

220. “It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.” – Jordan Peterson

 

221. “Always place your becoming above your current being.” – Jordan Peterson

222. “You should be afraid of taking risks and pursuing something meaningful, but you should be more afraid of staying where you are if it’s making miserable.” – Jordan Peterson

223. “These little things that are right in front of us, they’re not little.” – Jordan Peterson

224. “This hell develops because creative exploration—impossible without humble acknowledgment of the unknown—constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning.” – Jordan Peterson

225. “If you’re going to be successful you need to be smart, conscientious, and tough.” – Jordan Peterson

226. “Interest is a spirit beckoning from the unknown—a spirit calling from outside the walls of society.” – Jordan Peterson

227. “A man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate.” – Jordan Peterson

228. “Maybe God thought His new creation would be able to handle the serpent, and considered its presence the lesser of two evils.” – Jordan Peterson

229. “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 Peterson

230. “If you over-coddle people, if you protect them from everything that’s sharp, you make them dull and narcissistic.” – Jordan Peterson

231. “If you have a comprehensive explanation for everything, then it decreases uncertainty and anxiety and reduces your cognitive load. And if you can use that simplifying algorithm to put yourself on the side of moral virtue, then you’re constantly a good person with a minimum of effort.” – Jordan Peterson

232. “If someone is badly hurt at some point in life—traumatized—the dominance counter can transform in a manner that makes additional hurt more rather than less likely.” – Jordan Peterson

233. “Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world.” – Jordan Peterson

234. “If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything—anything—to defend ourselves against that return.” – Jordan Peterson

235. “Your life isn’t margaritas on a beach in Jamaica. That happens now and then. Those are exceptions. Your life is how your wife greets you at the door when you come home every day, ’cause that’s like 10 minutes a day. Your life is how you treat each other over the breakfast table, ’cause that’s an hour and a half or an hour every single day. You get those mundane things right, those things you do every day. You concentrate on them and you make them pristine. It’s like you got 80% of your life put together. These little things that are right in front of us, they’re not little.” – Jordan Peterson

What do you think of Jordan Peterson and his way of thinking? Do you agree with most things he says? We’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below!