Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

But winning at everything might only mean that you're not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you're not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?

the difference between virtue and vice is the beginning of wisdom, something that can never be out of date.

There is another, closely allied form of conversation, where neither speaker is listening in the least to the other. Instead, each is using the time occupied by the current speaker to conjure up what he or she will say next, which will often be something off-topic, because the person anxiously waiting to speak has not been listening.

Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others.

As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, "He whose life has a why can bear almost any how."61

For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Communism, in particular, was attractive not so much to oppressed workers, its hypothetical beneficiaries, but to intellectuals—to those whose arrogant pride in intellect assured them they were always right. But the promised utopia never emerged.

Faith in the part of us that continues across those deaths is a prerequisite to thinking itself.

The internet is a graveyard of dead facts. But an idea that grips a person is alive

On Facebook and other forms of social media, therefore, you signal your so-called virtue, telling everyone how tolerant, open and compassionate you are, and wait for likes to accumulate.

Women are often intent on formulating the problem when they are discussing something, and they need to be listened to—even questioned—to help ensure clarity in the formulation. Then, whatever problem is left, if any, can be helpfully solved. (It should also be noted first that too-early problem-solving may also merely indicate a desire to escape from the effort of the problem-formulating conversation.)

What do you know about yourself? 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 over-estimate your self-knowledge.

Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer has unpredictable daily routines.

Susceptibility to despair, disease, aging and death is universal. In the final analysis, we do not appear to be the architects of our own fragility.

Los seres humanos son curiosos sobre la estructura y la función de todo, y no iba a ser menos en el caso de ellos mismos; nuestra capacidad para contar historias refleja nuestra capacidad para describirnos a nosotros mismos.

El sentido de nuestras limitaciones no es el sufrimiento; es la existencia misma. Se nos ha otorgado la capacidad soportar voluntariamente el peso terrible de nuestra mortalidad. Le damos la espalda a esa capacidad y nos degradamos a nosotros mismos porque tenemos miedo de la responsabilidad.

What shall I do with my infant's death? Hold my other loved ones and heal their pain.

The world is a very strange place, and there are times when the metaphorical or narrative description characteristic of culture and the material representation so integral to science appear to touch, when everything comes together—when life and art reflect each other equally.

We see tools and obstacles, not objects or things.

Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world.

It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." First, it is easy to assume that "nature" is something with a nature—something static.

When you move, everything is up in the air, at least for a while. It's stressful, but in the chaos there are new possibilities.

Nonetheless, people will often accept or even amplify their own suffering, as well as that of others, if they can brandish it as evidence of the world's injustice. There is no shortage of oppressors among the downtrodden, even if, given their lowly positions, many of them are only tyrannical wannabes. It's the easiest path to choose, moment to moment, although it's nothing but hell in the long run.

What are we to do about that? Abandon all ideals of beauty, health, brilliance and strength? That's not a good solution. That would merely ensure that we would feel ashamed, all the time—and that we would even more justly deserve it. I don't want women who can stun by their mere presence to disappear just so that others can feel unselfconscious.