Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

Psychotherapy is genuine conversation. Genuine conversation is exploration, articulation and strategizing. When you're involved in a genuine conversation, you're listening, and talking—but mostly listening. Listening is paying attention. It's amazing what people will tell you if you listen.

Nietzsche, for all his brilliance, allows himself anger, but does not perhaps sufficiently temper it with judgement. This is where Dostoevsky truly transcends Nietzsche, in my estimation—where Dostoevsky's great literature transcends Nietzsche's mere philosophy.

Acabé dándome cuenta mientras pensaba en estas cosas de que aquello que se puede amar de verdad en una persona está indisociablemente unido a sus limitaciones.

To sacrifice ourselves to God (to the highest good, if you like) does not mean to suffer silently and willingly when some person or organization demands more from us, consistently, than is offered in return. That means we are supporting tyranny, and allowing ourselves to be treated like slaves. It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

Everywhere, the cynic despairs, are bad decisions. But someone who has transcended that cynicism (or more accurately, replaced it with an even more profound doubt—that is, the doubt that doubt itself is an ultimately reliable guide) objects: the worst decision of all is none.

That which you approach voluntary shrinks as you approach it and you grow while if you run the reverse happens

Podrías empezar tratándote como a alguien a quien tienes la responsabilidad de ayudar.

The order that is most real is the order that is most unchanging—and that is not necessarily the order that is most easily seen.

Así que presta atención a tu postura. Deja de arquearte, enderézate. Di lo que piensas. Deja claro lo que quieres, como si tuvieras derecho a conseguirlo (al menos el mismo que los demás). Anda con la cabeza bien alta y mira al frente con franqueza. Atrévete a ser un peligro. Haz que la serotonina fluya a raudales a través de las vías neuronales que arden a la espera de su efecto tranquilizante. La

Without the intermediation of the social world, it would be impossible for us to organize our minds, and we would simply be overwhelmed by the world.

my first reaction to a command might just be that nobody, not even God, tells me what to do, even if it's good for me. But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there's nothing freeing about that.

No consigues la paz llevando la razón. Lo único que consigues es llevar la razón, mientras que a la otra persona le toca estar equivocada, es decir, derrotada y equivocada

You simply don't understand how every neural circuit through which you peer at the world has been shaped (and painfully) by the ethical aims of millions of years of human ancestors and all of the life that was lived for the billions of years before that.

Nietzsche, for his part, posited that individual human beings would have to invent their own values in the aftermath of God's death. But this is the element of his thinking that appears weakest, psychologically: we cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls. This was Carl Jung's great discovery—made in no little part because of his intense study of the problems posed by Nietzsche.

It is useful to take your place at the bottom of a hierarchy. It can aid in the development of gratitude and humility. Gratitude: There are people whose expertise exceeds your own, and you should be wisely pleased about that.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky both foresaw that communism would appear dreadfully attractive—an apparently rational, coherent, and moral alternative to religion or nihilism—and that the consequences would be lethal.

To have meaning in your life is better than to have what you want, because you may neither know what you want, nor what you truly need.

Cualquiera que haya sentido una dolorosa transformación tras sufrir un duro revés amoroso o profesional puede sentirse hasta cierto punto identificado con ese crustáceo que una vez lo dominaba todo.

Don't think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It's not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgment, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.

To share means properly to initiate the process of trade. A child who can't share who can't trade can't have any friends because having friends is a from of trade.

prove it. In fact, on average, you care more. People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves. That's not good. Even from your pet's perspective, it's not good.

the circuits that engage you — for example when you're having an argument about something fundamental with someone that you love. So you're trying to structure the world around you, jointly, to create a habitable space that you both can exist within. You're using the same circuits — the abstracted version — that our archaic ancestors would have used when they went out into the unknown itself to encounter beasts and predators and geographical unknowns.

Piaget suspected, for example, that games undertaken voluntarily will outcompete games imposed and played under threat of force, given that some of the energy that could be expended on the game itself, whatever its nature, has to be wasted on enforcement. There is evidence indicating the emergence of such voluntary game-like arrangements even among our nonhuman kin.6

You have a direction, but it might be wrong. You have a plan, but it might be ill-formed. You may have been led astray by your own ignorance—and, worse, by your own unrevealed corruption. You must make friends, therefore, with what you don't know, instead of what you know.