Jordan Peterson
Clinical psychologist and cultural commentator
Most quoted
"Order is not enough. You can't just be stable, and secure, and well-regulated. There has to be something else. Chaos is not enough. You can't just be creative, and dynamic, and exploratory, or you'll be dead, or in pieces. The proper place is the boundary between order and chaos."
— from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
"You are not your own property. You are, in part, the property of your community, and your culture, and your ancestors, and your children. And you have a responsibility to them all. And if you shirk that responsibility, you're going to pay a price. And so are they."
— from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 2018
"The individual must conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike, and the sacrifice of hedonic pleasure itself to the greater goal of spiritual enlightenment."
— from Maps of Meaning, 1999
All quotes by Jordan Peterson (362)
You are not your own property. You are, in part, the property of your community, and your culture, and your ancestors, and your children. And you have a responsibility to them all. And if you shirk that responsibility, you're going to pay a price. And so are they.
Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
Tell the truth—or, at least, don't lie.
Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).
Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
Be precise in your speech.
The truth is a terrible weapon. It's a terrible weapon. And it's a terrible weapon against yourself, too. Because if you tell the truth, you have to live with the consequences of it. And that's not easy.
Life is suffering. Love is the desire to see another being suffer less.
The purpose of life is to find the largest burden that you can bear and to bear it.
You can't be a good person if you're not dangerous.
The most fundamental religious question is 'What should I do with my life?'
The highest good is to articulate the truth, and the lowest evil is to lie.
It's not about being happy. It's about being useful.
If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.
Contemporaries of Jordan Peterson
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Jordan Peterson (1962).