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 can't have a meaningful life without some suffering.
The truth is a sword, and you have to wield it carefully.
You're going to pay a price for everything you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose to not pay a price. You only get to choose which price you pay.
To suffer terribly and to know that you are the cause of your own suffering: that is hell.
The truth is something that burns. It's not something that you can play with.
You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward.
It's in the most terrible places that the most profound truths are revealed.
Consciousness is the capacity to suffer and to know that you suffer.
The meaning of life is to be found in the responsibility that you take on.
The highest good is to be found in the pursuit of truth, even if it's painful.
The world is a place of suffering, and the only way to deal with it is to voluntarily confront it.
The ultimate truth is that we are all going to die.
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.
The truth is a terrible weapon, and it should be wielded with care.
Life is suffering. That's a given. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
The only way to find meaning is to take on responsibility.
Beauty is a manifestation of the divine.
You are not a victim. You are a hero in your own story.
The world is not a safe place. It's a place where you have to fight for what you believe in.
The ultimate meaning of life is to be found in the pursuit of truth and the confrontation of suffering.
Contemporaries of Jordan Peterson
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Jordan Peterson (1962).