Jordan Peterson is known for his straightforward yet thoughtful thoughts backed by science. His videos are pretty popular among today’s youth. A clinical psychologist by qualification, Mr. Peterson is also an author, media personality, and professor emeritus (honorary title for retired ones) at the University of Toronto. You can feel his passion for teaching and sharing his research and wisdom with his students, readers, and viewers. Here are 40+ insightful quotes by Jordan Peterson for an extraordinary life:
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don’t need to worry about 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.”
- “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.”
- “True thinking is rare—just like true listening.”
- “You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.”
- “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.”
- “Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.”
- “Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living – and the Ideal shames us all.”
- “We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.”
- “I will trust you—I will extend my hand to you—despite the risk of betrayal, because it is possible, through trust, to bring out the best in you, and perhaps in me.”
- “Aim to be the person at your father’s funeral that everyone, in their grief and misery, can rely on.”
- “If you’re going to be successful you need to be smart, conscientious, and tough.”
- “That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.”
- “Making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining a rogant, deceitful, and resentful.”
- “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”
- “You need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood, and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering.”
- “You might be winning, but you’re not growing; and growing might be the most important form of winning.”
- “Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate.”
- “The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.”
- “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.”
- “If you don’t say what you think, then you kill your unborn self.”
- “A certain amount of creativity and rebellion must be tolerated – or welcomed, depending on your point of view – to maintain the process of regeneration. Every rule was once a creative act, breaking other rules.”
- “Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness.”
- “If you over-coddle people, if you protect them from everything that’s sharp, you make them dull and narcissistic.”
- “If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences—and infer the motivation.”
- “A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known—that’s sin.”
- “You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!”
- “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.”
- “Evil is the force that believes its knowledge is complete.”
- “Men enforce a code of behaviour on each other, when working together. Do your work. Pull your weight. Stay awake and pay attention. Don’t whine or be touchy. Stand up for your friends. Don’t suck up and don’t snitch. Don’t be a slave to stupid rules. Don’t, in the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, be a girlie man. Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period. The harassment that is part of acceptance on a working crew is a test: are you tough, entertaining, competent and reliable? If not, go away. Simple as that. We don’t need to feel sorry for you. We don’t want to put up with your narcissism, and we don’t want to do your work.”
- “Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.””
- “Cooperation is for safety, security and companionship. Competition is for personal growth and status.”
- “Experience is the best teacher, and the worst experiences teach the best lessons.”
- “There is no evidence that the importance of friendship declines in any manner with age.”
- “What shall I do when my enemy succeeds? Aim a little higher and be grateful for the lesson.”
- “Treat yourself like you would someone you’re responsible for helping.”
- “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
- “If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.”
- “In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”
- “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.”
- “I’m not a fan of Positive Psychology, by the way, because happiness is basically extroversion minus neuroticism, and we knew that 15 years ago.”
Okay, we hope you enjoyed reading the above 40+ insightful quotes by Jordan Peterson. Which quote impacted you the most? Also, what do you think of his teachings? Do you like his teachings or you have a different opinion on what he says? Let us know in the comments.
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