Quotes from Jordan Peterson

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Don't be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

You can think of the entire Internet as a place where ideas embodied in cyberspace are having a war, and it's not much different than the war of gods in heaven, which has been taking place since there's been human beings.

I'm interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.

I'm always surprised when people respond positively to what I am saying, given its seriousnessness and strange nature.

Creative exploration [is] impossible, without (humble) acknowledgement of the unknown.

Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.

'Happiness' is a pointless goal.

You can't just slander someone, defame them, lie about them. You can't incite people to crime. There's all sorts of reasonable restrictions on free speech that are already codified in the British common-law system.

Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

Everything isn't political.

Power is competence.

A properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it's actually a being. 'Harry Potter''s a good example. So Harry's the hero, right. But he's tainted with evil. There's a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It's well balanced.

You can say, 'Well, isn't it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine' - well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn't matter, because that is how it's represented. It's been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can't change it. It's not possible. This is underneath everything.

The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

I'm a practical person. I'm not too bad a carpenter. I can renovate houses.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

To master a new technology, you have to play with it.

The multiplication force of technology on cognitive differences is massive.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.