Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything — anything — to defend ourselves against that return.

There are no innocuous ideologies. They're forms of pathological over simplification and they're also clubs, I mean the kind of clubs that you hit people with as well as the kind that you belong to... the advantage (to me) of being an ideologue is that I can explain everything, I can feel morally superior, and I know who my enemies are...and you know what you're supposed to do with enemies? They're not your friends, you move against them.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great documenter of the slave-labour-camp horrors of the latter, once wrote that the "pitiful ideology" holding that "human beings are created for happiness" was an ideology "done in by the first blow of the work assigner's cudgel.

we may not exactly be God, but we're not exactly nothing, either.

Our society faces the increasing call to deconstruct its stabilizing traditions to include smaller and smaller numbers of people who do not or will not fit into the categories upon which even our perceptions are based. This is not a good thing. Each person's private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous.

that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being,

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance

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

Michelangelo's great perfect marble David cries out to its observer: "You could be more than you are.

When you have something to say, silence is a lie—and tyranny feeds on lies.

Lobsters have more in common with you than you might think (particularly when you are feeling crabby—ha ha).

Territory matters, and there is little difference between territorial rights and social status. It is often a matter of life and death.

True thinking is rare—just like true listening.

Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you.

What shall I do when my enemy succeeds? Aim a little higher and be grateful for the lesson.

The moral of the story? Beware of intellectuals who make a monotheism out of their theories of motivation.

Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

People think they think, but it's not true. It's mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare—just like true listening. Thinking is listening to yourself. It's difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world.

If we lived in Truth; if we spoke the Truth - then we could walk with God once again, and respect ourselves, and others, and the world. Then we might treat ourselves like people we cared for. We might strive to set the world straight. We might orient it toward Heaven, where we would want people we cared for to dwell, instead of Hell, where our resentment and hatred would eternally sentence everyone.

Every explorer is therefore, by necessity, a revolutionary, and every successful revolutionary is a peacemaker.

But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.

When things break down, what has been ignored rushes in. When things are no longer specified, with precision, the walls crumble, and chaos makes its presence known. When we've been careless, and let things slide, what we have refused to attend to gathers itself up, adopts a serpentine form, and strikes--often at the worst possible moment. It is then that we see what focused intent, precision of aim and careful attention protects us from.

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.

Depressed people, for example, can start feeling useless and burdensome, as well as grief-stricken and pained. This makes them withdraw from contact with friends and family. Then the withdrawal makes them more lonesome and isolated, and more likely to feel useless and burdensome. Then they withdraw more. In this manner, depression spirals and amplifies.