Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitation.

El miedo es la postura a priori, la respuesta natural a todo para lo que no se ha designado e incorporado una estructura de adaptación conductual.

People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves.

The best treatment for alcoholism is religious conversion.

Mark Twain dijo en una ocasión: «Lo que nos mete en problemas no es lo que no sabemos, sino lo que creemos que sabemos, pero no sabemos».

El temor es la reacción innata a todo lo que no se ha vuelto predecible, como consecuencia de una conducta exitosa, creativa, exploratoria asumida en su presencia, en algún momento del pasado.

There is no shortage of oppressors among the downtrodden, even if, given their lowly positions, many of them are only tyrannical wannabes.

means that people, unsettled by their vulnerability, eternally fear to tell the truth, to mediate between chaos and order, and to manifest their destiny.

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.

if you really want to get killed, the best thing to do is go drink with a family member

To say it again: it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist.

He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.

At least I am taking care of myself. At least I am of use to my family, and to the other people around me. At least I am moving, stumbling upward, under the load I have determined to carry.

Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder. That is because you are now genuinely involved in making things better. You are minimizing the unnecessary suffering. You are encouraging those around you, by example and word. You are constraining the malevolence in your own heart and the hearts of others.

Psychotherapy is not advice. Advice is what you get when the person you're talking with about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence. If you weren't so stupid, after all, you wouldn't have your stupid problems.

Maybe you are a loser. And maybe you're not—but if you are, you don't have to continue in that mode.

Order is the public façade we're called upon to wear, the politeness of a gathering of civilized strangers, and the thin ice on which we all skate.

If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it's time to examine your values. It's time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It's time to let go.

Thus, they did not concern themselves with what the world was, as a scientist might have it, but with how a human being should act. I suggested that our ancestors portrayed the world as a stage—a drama—instead of a place of objects. I described how I had come to believe that the constituent elements of the world as drama were order and chaos, and not material things.

Maybe you're even just a collection of bad habits.

And the story suggests something more: unchaperoned, and left to our own untutored judgment, we are quick to aim low and worship qualities that are beneath us—in this case, an artificial animal that brings out our own animal instincts in a completely unregulated way. The old Hebrew story makes it clear how the ancients felt about our prospects for civilized behaviour in the absence of rules that seek to elevate our gaze and raise our standards.

Those who have lied enough, in word and action, live there, in hell—now. Take a walk down any busy urban street. Keep your eyes open and pay attention. You will see people who are there, now. These are the people to whom you instinctively give a wide berth. These are the people who are immediately angered if you direct your gaze toward them, although sometimes they will instead turn away in shame.

It takes careful observation, and education, and reflection, and communication with others, just to scratch the surface of your beliefs.

But a woman should not look after a man, because she must look after children, and a man should not be a child.