Jordan Peterson is a modern-day Aristotle. His quotes; from interviews, and from his work as a lecturer and author, are full of wisdom–difficult to digest at first read.
Jordan Peterson is a psychologist with a firm stance against Social Justice, and pervasive, toxic-entitlement culture contaminating the world.
In Jordan Peterson’s first mainstream book release, 12 rules for life, he writes–somewhat longwinded, that young men need to sack up and adopt responsibility. A life of box, watching others stream video games about little lego worlds made of cubes is not the way to happiness–it’s the way to a life seeded with un-satisfaction and self-doubt.
The way to being happy, involves setting goals and seeing them through because humans need to see improvement to feel good about themselves.
Self fulfillment through accomplishment.
We’ve already written articles about Dr Peterson in the past, including a review of his magnificent authoring program called Self Authoring. Below are articles for you to read and learn more about Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Previous Jordan Peterson Articles
- A review of Jordan Peterson’s self-authoring program | 5/5 stars
- The ten Best Jordan Peterson interviews
You can learn a great amount by reading the smallest quotes. Jordan Peterson’s quotes will resonate with you, particularly around freedom, discipline, and the will to win.
Below are various quotes from Jordan Peterson. Some came from his book, 12 rules for life. Other quotes came from podcast interviews Peterson was a guest on.
Do you have a favorite not listed below? Drop it in the comments.
If any of the quotes resonate with you, save them. Share them on social. If you share our images, we’ll be eternally grateful.
Jordan Peterson Quotes
Quote 1
The only way to test if authority is real, is pushing against it.
Quote 2
Power is competence.
Quote 3
Stop being so compliant all the time. Rules must be tested.
Quote 4
Some women don’t want to lose their baby boys so they keep them–forever.
Quote 5
Don’t be dependent at all. Period.
Quote 6
What would your life be like if you made use of all of the potential you were offered?
Quote 7
Being harmless isn’t a virtue.
Quote 8
If you can say what you’re doing, you’re not producing art.
Quote 9
Art is like a dream. It doesn’t say what it is–it just is.
Jordan Peterson Quote 10
Quote 11
If you make bad decisions–things get worse. Not just for you.
Quote 12
You don’t know how your actions echo. It matters what you do.
Quote 13
Have respect for yourself. Have fear for yourself.
Quote 14
You are obligated not to associate with people who are trying to damage the structure of being.
Quote 15
Obviously I’m not perfect but I’m slightly less terrible than I was yesterday. you keep that up for five years and you’re wherever you should be.
Quote 16
Most people’s lives are nicely saturated with tragedy.
Quote 17
You should be better than you are, but it’s not because you’re worse than other people. It’s because you’re not everything you should be.
Quote 18
There’s absolutely no doubt you can be slightly better tomorrow than you are today.
Quote 19
Sometimes you’re done. Most of the time you aren’t. If you’re in a nursing home, you’re done.
If you aren’t dead. Keep Going. There’s still time.
Jordan Peterson Quote 20
Quote 21
lies make you weak – and you can feel it.
Quote 22
You want to enter a conversation and come out wiser than you went in.
Quote 23
Winning when you’re wrong is a really bad idea.
Quote 24
Discipline is a matter of being terrified of the right things.
Quote 25
People often act out complexes before they understand them.
Quote 26
Humans treat the future as something they can bargain with.
Quote 27
If you aren’t moving forward in your life there is some idea, mode of action, or habit you’re so in love with you won’t let go of it.
Quote 28
People need believe systems to exist.
Quote 29
People who live by the same code are rendered mutually predictable to one another. They act in keeping with each other’s expectations and desires. They can cooperate. They can even compete peacefully, because everyone knows what to expect from everyone else. A shared belief system, partly psychological, partly acted out, simplifies everyone— in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others.
Jordan Peterson Quote 30
Quote 31
without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions— and there’s nothing freeing about that.
Quote 32
Chaos is what emerges more catastrophically when you suddenly find yourself without employment, or are betrayed by a lover. As the antithesis of symbolically masculine order, it’s presented imaginatively as feminine. It’s the new and unpredictable suddenly emerging in the midst of the commonplace familiar. It’s Creation and Destruction, the source of new things and the destination of the dead (as nature, as opposed to culture, is simultaneously birth and demise).
Quote 33
Territory matters, and there is little difference between territorial rights and social status. It is often a matter of life and death.
Quote 34
A vanquished competitor loses confidence, sometimes for days. Sometimes the defeat can have even more severe consequences.
Quote 35
The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automatized. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity. This can be perceived most clearly in the case of small children, who are delightful and comical and playful when their sleeping and eating schedules are stable, and horrible and whiny and nasty when they are not.
Quote 36
Our anxiety systems are very practical. They assume that anything you run away from is dangerous. The proof of that is, of course, the fact you ran away.
Quote 37
But just as often, people are bullied because they won’t fight back.
Quote 38
It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.
Quote 39
You need to consider the future and think, “What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly?
Jordan Peterson Quote 40
Quote 41
It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.
Quote 42
No matter how good you are at something, or how you rank your accomplishments, there is someone out there who makes you look incompetent.
Quote 43
We are not equal in ability or outcome, and never will be. A very small number of people produce very much of everything. The winners don’t take all, but they take most, and the bottom is not a good place to be.
Quote 44
If the critical voice within says the same denigrating things about everyone, no matter how successful, how reliable can it be? Maybe its comments are chatter, not wisdom.
Quote 45
Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse. To do anything at all is therefore to play a game with a defined and valued end, which can always be reached more or less efficiently and elegantly. Every game comes with its chance of success or failure.
Quote 46
You could watch the precious days tick by. Or you could learn how to entice yourself into sustainable, productive activity. Do you ask yourself what you want? Do you negotiate fairly with yourself? Or are you a tyrant, with yourself as slave?
Quote 47
Should is your responsibility, and you should live up to it.
Quote 48
Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching, or investigating, or looking for, or having. We must see, but to see, we must aim, so we are always aiming.
Quote 49
Five hundred small decisions, five hundred tiny actions, compose your day, today, and every day. Could you aim one or two of these at a better result?
Jordan Peterson Quote 50
Quote 51
Modern parents are terrified of two frequently juxtaposed words: discipline and punish. They evoke images of prisons, soldiers and jackboots.
Quote 52
Be good company when something fun is happening, so that you’re invited for the fun. Act so that other people are happy you’re around, so that people will want you around. A child who knows these rules will be welcome everywhere.
Quote 53
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.
Quote 54
Taking the easy way out or telling the truth— those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.
Quote 55
If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself.
Quote 56
Chris started by hating men, but he ended by hating women. He wanted them, but he had rejected education, and career, and desire. He smoked heavily, and was unemployed. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he was not of much interest to women. That made him bitter. I tried to convince him that the path he had chosen was only going to lead to further ruin. He needed to develop some humility. He needed to get a life.
Quote 57
A stable, loving relationship is highly desirable, for men as well as women. For women, however, it is often what is most wanted.
Quote 58
If radical right-wingers were receiving state funding for political operations disguised as university courses, as the radical left-wingers clearly are, the uproar from progressives across North America would be deafening.
Quote 59
Aggression underlies the drive to be outstanding, to be unstoppable, to compete, to win— to be actively virtuous, at least along one dimension. Determination is its admirable, pro-social face.
Jordan Peterson Quote 60
Quote 61
The world is a forum of sharing and trading (that’s Rule 7, again), not a treasure-house for the plundering. To give is to do what you can to make things better. The good in people will respond to that, and support it, and imitate it, and multiply it, and return it, and foster it, so that everything improves and moves forward.
Quote 62
The idea that life is suffering is a tenet, in one form or another, of every major religious doctrine, as we have already discussed. Buddhists state it directly. Christians illustrate it with the cross. Jews commemorate the suffering endured over centuries. Such reasoning universally characterizes the great creeds, because human beings are intrinsically fragile.
Quote 63
Cooperation is for safety, security and companionship. Competition is for personal growth and status. However, if a given group is too small, it has no power or prestige, and cannot fend off other groups. In consequence, being one of its members is not that useful.
Quote 64
I teach excessively agreeable people to note the emergence of such resentment, which is a very important, although very toxic, emotion. There are only two major reasons for resentment: being taken advantage of (or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of), or whiny refusal to adopt responsibility and grow up.
Jordan Peterson Quote 65
Share this article if you found any of these quotes valuable–don’t forget to save your favorites.
Read Next:
- A review of Jordan Peterson’s self-authoring program | 5/5 stars
- The ten Best Jordan Peterson interviews
