Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

Here's the fundamental problem: group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual.

se puede conseguir algo mejor en el futuro renunciando a algo valioso en el presente.

No i nakon iskustva zla mogu?e je nau?iti se dobru.

All that matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is permanence—and the dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It's permanent. It's real.

Behavior is imitated, then abstracted into play, formalized into drama and story, crystallized into myth and codified into religion—and only then criticized in philosophy, and provided, post-hoc, with rational underpinnings. Explicit philosophical statements regarding the grounds for and nature of ethical behavior, stated in a verbally comprehensible manner, were not established through rational endeavor.

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

sheer physical power is an unstable basis on which to found lasting dominance,

If we start aiming at something different—something like "I want my life to be better"—our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit. Then we can put that information to use and move, and act, and observe, and improve.

El punto negro en la parte blanca y el blanco en la parte negra indican la posibilidad de transformación: solo cuando todo parece seguro puede irrumpir lo desconocido de forma brutal e inesperada.

If you're going to insist on bending the world

Así que los sacrificios son necesarios para mejorar el futuro, y si son grandes, entonces valen más.

We were struggling for position before we had skin, or hands, or lungs, or bones. There is little more natural than culture. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees.

The totalitarian says, in essence, "You must rely on faith in what you already know." But that is not what saves. What saves is the willingness to learn from what you don't know. That is faith in the possibility of human transformation. That is faith in the sacrifice of the current self for the self that could be.

the willingness of the individual to stand up for him or herself protects everyone from the corruption of society.

A properly socialized three-year-old is polite and engaging. She's also no pushover. She evokes interest from other children and appreciation from adults. She exists in a world where other kids welcome her and compete for her attention, and where adults are happy to see her, instead of hiding behind false smiles. She will be introduced to the world by people who are pleased to do so.

I would like to thank Sally Harding, my agent, and the fine people she works with at CookeMcDermid. Without Sally, this book would have never been written.

Slay the dragon in his lair before he comes to your village. If you run from the things you are afraid of, you run from what you need, in fact, to find.

No tree can grow to Heaven," adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, "unless its roots reach down to Hell."134 Such a statement should give everyone who encounters it pause. There was no possibility for movement upward, in that great psychiatrist's deeply considered opinion, without a corresponding move down. It is for this reason that enlightenment is so rare.

After that comes the arrogance and sense of superiority that inevitably accompanies the production of successful lies (hypothetically successful lies—and that is one of the greatest dangers: apparently everyone is fooled, so everyone is stupid, except me. Everyone is stupid and fooled, by me—so I can get away with whatever I want). Finally, there is the proposition: "Being itself is susceptible to my manipulations. Thus, it deserves no respect.

cualquier jerarquía engendra ganadores y perdedores. Los ganadores, obviamente, tienen más probabilidades de justificar la jerarquía y los perdedores, de criticarla.

But a villain who despairs of his villainy has not become a hero. A hero is something positive, not just the absence of evil.

Chaos is the deep ocean bottom to which Pinocchio voyaged to rescue his father from Monstro, whale and fire-breathing dragon. That journey into darkness and rescue is the most difficult thing a puppet must do, if he wants to be real; if he wants to extract himself from the temptations of deceit and acting and victimization and impulsive pleasure and totalitarian subjugation; if he wants to take his place as a genuine Being in the world.

Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place.

You're associating with people who are bad for you not because it's better for anyone, but because it's easier.