Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

Thus, the position of top dog, when occupied properly, has as one of its fundamental attractions the opportunity to identify deserving individuals at or near the beginning of their professional life, and provide them with the means of productive advancement.

Osiris, god of order, falls apart. This happens all the time, in people's individual lives, and equally in the history of families, cities, and states. Things fall apart when love affairs collapse, careers deteriorate, or cherished dreams die; when despair, anxiety, uncertainty, and hopelessness manifest themselves in the place of habitable order; and when nihilism and the abyss make their dread appearance, destroying the desirable and stable values of current life.

Such people have a perfect right to their opinions and actions, if they remain lawful. But they have no reasonable claim to public funding. 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.

Consider, as well, that you may be blocked in your progress not because you lack opportunity, but because you have been too arrogant to make full use of what already lies in front of you.

And if you're not thinking such things through, then you're not acting responsibly as a parent. You're leaving the dirty work to someone else, who will be much dirtier doing it.

What has emerged from behind its corpse, however—and this is an issue of central importance—is something even more dead; something that was never alive, even in the past: nihilism, as well as an equally dangerous susceptibility to new, totalizing, utopian ideas. It was in the aftermath of God's death that the great collective horrors of Communism and Fascism sprang forth (as both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche predicted they would).

And, since we don't know right from wrong, or what is good, just about the most inappropriate thing an adult can do is give a young person advice about how to live.

Meaning gratifies all impulses, now and forever.

Living things are always to be found in places they can master, surrounded by things and situations that make them vulnerable.

Social Institutions Are Necessary—but Insufficient

The information in our experience is latent, like gold in ore—the case we made in Rule II. It must be extracted and refined with great effort, and often in collaboration with other people, before it can be employed to improve the present and the future.

With their capacity for aggression strait-jacketed within a too-narrow morality, those who are only or merely compassionate and self-sacrificing (and naïve and exploitable) cannot call forth the genuinely righteous and appropriately self-protective anger necessary to defend themselves.

Lo tienes que saber porque no es posible arreglar algo antes de saber que está roto.

You are either a success, a comprehensive, singular, over-all good thing, or its opposite, a failure, a comprehensive, singular, irredeemably bad thing. The words imply no alternative and no middle ground. However, in a world as complex as ours, such generalizations (really, such failure to differentiate) are a sign of naive, unsophisticated or even malevolent analysis.

Your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition--radically, fatally insufficient.

A cegueira voluntária é a recusa em saber algo que pode ser conhecido. É a recusa em admitir que aquele som é alguém a bater à porta. É a recusa em ver o enorme gorila na sala, o elefante debaixo do tapete, o esqueleto no armário. É a recusa em admitir erros enquanto seguimos com o plano.

Courageous and truthful words will render your reality simple, pristine, well-defined and habitable.

Does anything other than the axiomatic acceptance of the divine value of the individual make slavery a self-evident wrong?

Conversely, just when everything seems lost, new order can emerge from catastrophe and chaos.

Where might you learn how to play? Everywhere . . . if you are fortunate and awake.

Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not, and if a reasonable solution might, in principle, be negotiated. Have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel's back.

Your nervous system responds in an entirely different manner when you face the demands of life voluntarily.

All these heroes act out what was perhaps the greatest discovery ever made by man's primordial ancestors: if you have the vision and the courage (and a good stout stick, when necessary), you can chase away the worst of snakes.

But it is not easy to distinguish between someone truly wanting and needing help and someone who is merely exploiting a willing helper.