Love him or hate him, there’s no denying the fact that Jordan Peterson quotes have the power to provoke thinking and even change lives. For those who hate him, they call him controversial. But for those who needed to hear what he has to say, they have nothing but gratitude.
Men, women from all walks of life and from across the globe have testified to how Jordan Peterson has helped them through their suffering. “Clean your room!,” may be one of his most popular quotes. It’s too simplistic, yes, but it’s also practical and doable.
- Who is Jordan Peterson?
- Jordan Peterson Quotes to Live By
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Suffering
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Freedom of Speech
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Taking Responsibility
- Jordan Peterson on Gratitude
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Truth
- Jordan Peterson on Character Development
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Men
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Life
- Jordan Peterson Quotes on Raising Children
- Jordan Peterson Books and Other Resources
Who is Jordan Peterson?
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist who rose to prominence for his criticism of Canada’s controversial Bill C-16. The bill has an inclusion on gender expression, which Peterson argues violates his freedom of speech. He is also a professor with an extensive collection of lectures posted on his YouTube channel.
In addition, Dr. Peterson is a best-selling author of books such as “Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief” and “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” which has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. “Beyond Oder: 12 More Rules for Life” is a sequel to his 2018 bestseller and he has another book in the works, which is tentatively titled, “We Who Wrestle With God.”
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Jordan Peterson Quotes to Live By
Despite his critics, Jordan Peterson’s popularity and notoriety continue to grow. With every talk, lecture and quote, more and more people around the world are thankful for what JP is doing and continues to do.
If you’re one of the millions who live by Dr. Jordan Peterson quotes and advices, here’s a collection of Jordan Peterson quotes worth reading over and over again:
Jordan Peterson Quotes on Suffering
“The purpose of life is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.”
“The light that you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of the darkness you are willing to forthrightly confront.”
“To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.”
Self-love is the only antidote to the chaos of existence. And if you don’t love and care for yourself and your own needs, you will cause unnecessary suffering both for yourself and others.
“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 Quotes on Freedom of Speech
“If you don’t say what you think, then you kill your unborn self.”
“In order to think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you can have a conversation inside your own head. That’s thinking.”
“You can’t be a worthy adversary to someone you’re not in dialogue with.”
“People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds.”
“The right to think and express your thoughts, especially when you speak the truth, is not just another value. It’s the most fundamental value.”
“Freedom of speech is not just another value. It’s the foundation of Western civilization.”
“The only way you can take someone out is by taking their speech away.”
“To stand up for free speech is to know what you think and to be willing to articulate and defend it, and it’s to know that you can do that. That’s what free speech is about.”
“The right to offend is integral to the proper functioning of a democracy.”
“Free speech is the mechanism by which we keep tyrants and the arbitrary power of the state at bay.”
“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.”
It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.
“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.”
“Don’t be a slave to stupid rules.”
“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 Quotes on Taking Responsibility
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.”
“Ideologues are people who pretend they know how to ‘make the world a better place’ before they’ve taken care of themselves.”
“Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”
“Treat yourself as if you are someone that you are responsible for helping.”
“If you fulfill your obligations every day, you don’t need to worry about the future.”
“You must take care to fix the problems that you can fix.”
“The successful among us delay gratification.”
“You have to be the reliable person at your father’s funeral.”
“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.”
“If you fulfill your obligations every day you don’t need to worry about the future.”
“Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth. That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.”
“The secret to your existence is right in front of you. And it manifests itself as all those things you know you should do but you’re avoiding.”
“It’s better to do something badly than to not do it at all.”
“Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.”
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.”
“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.”
“No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.”
“Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There are some games you don’t get to play unless you are all in.”
Jordan Peterson on Gratitude
“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.”
“There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.”
Jordan Peterson Quotes on Truth
“Tell the truth or, at least, don’t lie. That’s a good start.”
“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.”
“Truth is the handmaiden of love. Dialogue is the pathway to truth. Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.”
“If you speak what you think and someone gets hurt, that’s not your fault, unless you’re trying to hurt them.”
“Truth, virtue, and courage are not necessarily enough, but they are our best bet.”
“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.”
Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.
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.
“Don’t ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.”
“If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.”
Jordan Peterson on Character Development
“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.”
“To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small.”
“You need to consider the future And think, ‘What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly?”
“The successful among us delay gratification and bargain with the future.”
“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.”
“The way that you make people resilient is by voluntarily exposing them to things that they are afraid of and that makes them uncomfortable.”
“Always place your becoming above your current being.”
“If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.”
“I don’t tell people, ‘You’re okay the way that you are.’ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‘You’re way less than you could be.”
“It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.”
“It’s very difficult to regulate yourself, and if you learn to do that, well, it starts to spill over.”
“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
“Become aware of your own insufficiency.”
“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.”
“Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.”
“If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards. And they will push you, and push you, and push you, until you fall off a cliff.”
“You’re not a victim unless you say you are.”
“You’re not necessarily ‘something special’ and neither is everyone else.”
“You have to stretch yourself beyond where you are already so that you can incrementally become more than you are.”
“You can do an awful lot by writing down what happened to you and thinking it through.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We’re far more in control of our own emotions than we often think.”
Jordan Peterson Quotes on Men
“One of the things I’ve told men over and over and over and over is if you’re being rejected by all the women that you approach, it’s not the women!”
“Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.”
“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.”
“Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption.”
Jordan Peterson Quotes on Life
“Happiness is a pointless goal.”
“Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.”
“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.”
“People have this capacity within them to set the world straight.”
“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.”
“The purpose of life is not happiness. It’s usefulness.”
“Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).”
“That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.”
“You should not do what you hate.”
“You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward.”
“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.”
“You’re not as nice as you think. You don’t experience the world as much as you think. You’re not as in control of yourself as you think.”
Jordan Peterson Quotes on Raising Children
“Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.”
“Do not bother children while they are skateboarding.”
“It is the primary duty of parents to make their children socially desirable. That will provide the child with opportunity, self-regard, and security. It’s more important even than fostering individual identity.”
“You can’t keep kids safe. The best thing that you can do is make them able and courageous. It’s absolutely crucial.”
“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. The research literature is quite clear on this. This matters, because peers are the primary source of socialization after the age of four.”
Jordan Peterson Books and Other Resources
If you’re a huge JP fan then let’s go beyond popular Jordan Peterson quotes. Dive deeper into how his mind works. Here’s a list of his books as well as other resources you might be interested in:
- Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture Of Belief Softcover
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
- Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
Jordan Peterson Biblical Series: Exodus
Join Jordan Peterson and other brilliant minds the likes of Gregg Hurwitz, Dr. Douglas Hedley, Dr. Dennis Prager and more in this rare roundtable discussion of the Exodus.
Do you have more Jordan Peterson quotes that are not on the list? Let us know and we’ll have it added to this collection.
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