Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

An idea has an aim. It wants something. It posits a value structure. An idea believes that what it is aiming for is better than what it has now.

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.

people will often accept or even amplify their own suffering, as well as that of others, if they can brandish it as evidence of the world's injustice.

The first woman made the first man self-conscious and resentful. Then the first man blamed the woman. And then the first man blamed God. This is exactly how every spurned male feels, to this day. First,

People sacrificed immensely to bring about what we have now. In many cases, they literally died for it—and we should act with some respect for that fact.

THE QUESTION IS WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO ANYTHING?

Because we are so scientific now—and so determinedly materialistic—it is very difficult for us even to understand that other ways of seeing can and do exist. But those who existed during the distant time in which the foundational epics of our culture emerged were much more concerned with the actions that dictated survival (and with interpreting the world in a manner commensurate with that goal) than with anything approximating what we now understand as objective truth.

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto," said the Roman playwright Terence: nothing human is alien to me.

Adultery is still in.

La tragedia del Ser consciente de sí mismo genera sufrimiento, un sufrimiento inevitable que a su vez causa el deseo de una satisfacción egoísta e inmediata, es decir, el deseo de aquello que resulta conveniente.

What is it that we see, when we cannot understand what is happening to us, cannot determine where we are, know no longer who we are, and no longer understand what surrounds us?

You can discipline your children, or you can turn that responsibility over to the harsh, uncaring judgmental world—and the motivation for the latter decision should never be confused with love.

Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource.

You remember the old joke: insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

I have seen people define their utopia and then bend their lives into knots trying to make it reality. A left-leaning student adopts a trendy, anti-authority stance and spends the next twenty years working resentfully to topple the windmills of his imagination.

Circumstances change, and so can you. Positive feedback loops, adding effect to effect, can spiral counterproductively in a negative direction, but can also work to get you ahead.

the chaos forever lurking beneath our thin surfaces of security.

Here's a productive symbolic idea: the future is a judgmental father.

People who think such things view Being itself as inequitable and harsh to the point of corruption, and human Being, in particular, as contemptible. They appoint themselves supreme adjudicators of reality and find it wanting. They are the ultimate critics.

Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate.

You're a spirit, so to speak—a psyche—as well. Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically. Standing up means voluntarily accepting the burden of Being.

For such individuals, the world of experience is insufficient and evil—so to hell with everything!

Sometimes you have to change the way you understand everything to properly understand a single something.

You could begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.