Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell. And once in Hell it is very easy to curse Being itself.

I'm changing my mind all the time

Talking yourself into irrelevance is not a profound critique of Being. It's a cheap trick of the rational mind.

Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. Animals can't manage that, but humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can.

one of the matters he cautions readers to be most wary of is ideology, no matter who is peddling it or to what end.

You have to get along with other people. A therapist is one of those other people. A good therapist will tell you the truth about what he thinks. (That is not the same thing as telling you that what he thinks is the truth.) Then at least you have the honest opinion of at least one person. That's not so easy to get. That's not nothing. That's key to the psychotherapeutic process: two people tell each other the truth—and both listen.

Nietzsche said that a man's worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate. You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would.

You must make friends, therefore, with what you don't know, instead of what you know.

You can use your own standards of judgment. You can rely on yourself for guidance. You don't have to adhere to some external, arbitrary code of behaviour (although you should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don't have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you).

It takes a village to organize a mind.

You don't understand anything. You didn't even know that you were blind.

Qué debo hacer cuando desprecio lo que tengo? Recordar a aquellos que no tienen nada y que aspiran a ser agradecidos».

La doctrina cristiana elevó el alma individual, colocando al esclavo, al dueño, al plebeyo y al noble en una posición de igualdad metafísica, convirtiéndolos en iguales ante Dios y la ley.

Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.

Her house was built on a foundation of sand. The ice she was skating on was simply too thin. She fell through, into the water below, and is drowning.

These Westerners were different: self-made, unentitled, hands on, neighbourly and less precious than many of their big-city peers, who increasingly spend their lives indoors, manipulating symbols on computers.

Some things change quickly, but they are nested within other things that change less quickly.

But even what is terrible in actuality often pales in significance compared to what is terrible in imagination. And often what cannot be confronted because of its horror in imagination can in fact be confronted when reduced to its-still-admittedly-terrible actuality.

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. Make friends with people who want the best for you.

A villain who despairs of his villainy has not become a hero. A hero is something positive, not just the absence of evil.

To discuss an event, particularly something emotional, like a death or serious illness, is to slowly choose what to leave behind.

Despite the fact that the world is a very dark place, and that each of us has our black elements of soul, we see in each other a unique blend of actuality and possibility that is a kind of miracle: one that can manifest itself, truly, in the world, in the relationships we have that are grounded in trust and love.

You cannot aim yourself at anything if you are completely undisciplined and untutored. You will not know what to target, and you won't fly straight, even if you somehow get your aim right. And then you will conclude, "There is nothing to aim for." And then you will be lost.

Success: that's the mystery. Virtue: that's what's inexplicable. To fail, you merely have to cultivate a few bad habits. You just have to bide your time.