Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

A little careful kindness goes a long way, and judicious reward is a powerful motivator.

Freud catalogued an extensive list of phenomena akin to repression—the active rejection of potentially conscious psychological material from awareness—which he termed "defense mechanisms.

Fortify Your Position

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. —William Blake, from "Proverbs of Hell," The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety, because if you have no aim everything can mean anything or nothing, and neither of those two options makes for a tranquil spirit.

If you listen, instead, without premature judgment, people will generally tell you everything they are thinking—and with very little deceit. People will tell you the most amazing, absurd, interesting things. Very few of your conversations will be boring. (You can in fact tell whether or not you are actually listening in this manner. If the conversation is boring, you probably aren't.)

Un viejo perro manso puede morder, las más intimas amistades pueden traicionar y las nuevas ideas pueden destruir antiguas convicciones que resultaban cómodas. Este tipo de cosas importan. Son reales.

Things fall apart: this is one of the great discoveries of humanity. And we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails.

This principle is sometimes known as Price's law, after Derek J. de Solla Price,13 the researcher who discovered its application in science in 1963.

You are stuck with yourself. You are burdened with who you are right now and who you are going to be in the future. That means that if you are treating yourself properly, you must consider your repetition across time. You are destined to play a game with yourself today that must not interfere with the game you play tomorrow, next month, next year, and so on.

It has been said that every individual is the conscious or unconscious follower of some influential philosopher.

One might think that a generation that has heard endlessly, from their more ideological teachers, about the rights, rights, rights that belong to them, would object to being told that they would do better to focus instead on taking responsibility.

First error: Freud failed to notice that sins of omission contributed to mental illness as much as, or more than, the sins of commission, listed above, that constitute repression. In doing so, he merely thought in the typical manner. People generally believe that actively doing something bad (that is the sin of commission) is, on average, worse than passively not doing something good (that is the sin of omission).

Violence, after all, is no mystery. It's peace that's the mystery. Violence is the default.

Only unusually strong and logically consistent people act in this manner. Having realized all the stupidity of the joke that is being played on us and seeing that the blessings of the dead are greater than those of the living and that it is better not to exist, they act and put an end to this stupid joke; and they use any means of doing it: a rope around the neck, water, a knife in the heart, a train.

What shall I do to strengthen my spirit? Do not tell lies, or do what you despise.

You might discover, instead, that you were just afraid and, so, pretending to be moral.

Excuse the cliché, but it is necessary to walk before you can run. You may even have to crawl before you can walk. This is part of accepting your position as a beginner, at the bottom of the hierarchy you so casually, arrogantly, and self-servingly despise.

If you are a CEO, for example, and you suspect that your treasurer is cooking the books, and you do not investigate because you do not want to know, you may still be liable for your inaction—as is appropriate.

Una gran parte de las emociones positivas que sentimos está relacionada con objetivos. Técnicamente hablando, no somos felices si no nos vemos progresar, y la mera idea de progreso implica un valor.

that morality is relative, at best a personal "value judgment." Relative means that there is no absolute right or wrong in anything;

En otras palabras, nuestras mentes son mucho más antiguas que la humanidad. Nuestras categorías son mucho más antiguas que nuestra especie. Nuestra categoría más básica, tan antigua en cierto modo como el propio acto sexual, es la del sexo, masculino y femenino.

It was from this that I drew my fundamental moral conclusions. Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Don't be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression

Because doing what others do and have always done so often works, and because, sometimes, radical action can produce success beyond measure, the conservative and the creative attitudes and actions constantly propagate themselves.