By Renowned as a bestselling author, a globally famous psychologist, and a former Harvard professor, Jordan Peterson Quotes has garnered international recognition due to his intelligent reasoning and thought-provoking written works. His presence graces many podcasts, including The Rubin Report and The Joe Rogan Experience, while his appearances in YouTube videos have amassed millions of views. Widely regarded as a contemporary philosopher, Peterson’s speeches and writings wield significant influence among both political and corporate leaders.
Peterson’s acclaim rests upon his adept utilization of first principles thinking, a methodology he employs to unearth truths about various societal quandaries. However, his teachings often extend to finding resolutions for individual challenges. Peterson frequently dispenses guidance aimed at aiding individuals in locating purpose and achievement in their lives. Moreover, he fosters a mindset that delves deeper than surface-level concepts, urging people to explore avenues for self-improvement. Below are quotes from Jordan Peterson that illuminate paths toward self-betterment and conquering personal obstacles.
Best Jordan Peterson Quotes
Jordan B. Peterson
- I don’t think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.
2. When you have something to say, silence is a lie.
Jordan B. Peterson
3. To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).
Jordan B. Peterson
4. You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.
Jordan B. Peterson
5. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.
Jordan B. Peterson
6. And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.
Jordan B. Peterson
7. If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self.
Jordan B. Peterson
8. If you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.
For example if someone is making everyone around them miserable and you’d like to know why, their motive may simply be to make everyone around them miserable including themselves.
Jordan B. Peterson
9. If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don’t need to worry about the future.
Jordan B. Peterson
10. What is your friend: the things you know, or the things you don’t know. First of all, there’s a lot more things you don’t know. And second, the things you don’t know is the birthplace of all your new knowledge! So if you make the things you don’t know your friend, rather than the things you know, well then you’re always on a quest in a sense. You’re always looking for new information in the off chance that somebody who doesn’t agree with you will tell you something you couldn’t have figured out on your own! It’s a completely different way of looking at the world. It’s the antithesis of opinionated.
Jordan B. Peterson
11. It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.
Jordan B. Peterson
12. To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.
Jordan B. Peterson
13. No tree can grow to Heaven,” adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, “unless its roots reach down to Hell.
Jordan B. Peterson
14. The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.
Jordan B. Peterson
15. Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects. And you can say “Well it’s only symbolic that women are nature”, it’s like no, it’s not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can’t get more like nature than that, in fact it’s the very definition of nature.
Jordan B. Peterson
16. Intolerance of others’ views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or, possibly, dangerous.
Jordan B. Peterson
17. Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.
Jordan B. Peterson
18. Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.
Jordan B. Peterson
19. So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.
Jordan B. Peterson
20. If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.
Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson’s Motivational Quotes
If you’re seeking methods to enhance your life, these quotes from Jordan Peterson can serve as a wellspring of inspiration, propelling you to place yourself and your achievements at the forefront. Don’t hesitate to impart these motivational quotes by Jordan Peterson to your companions, enabling them to draw value from these profound insights.
21. Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.
Jordan B. Peterson
22. No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.
Jordan B. Peterson
23. 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.
Jordan B. Peterson
24. ‘Happiness’ is a pointless goal.
Jordan B. Peterson
25. It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.
Jordan B. Peterson
26. It makes sense that a witch lives in a swamp.
Jordan B. Peterson
27. The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious.
Jordan B. Peterson
28. To master a new technology, you have to play with it.
Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson’s Quotes on Suffering
29. To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.
Jordan B. Peterson
30. The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.
Jordan B. Peterson
31. You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.
Jordan B. Peterson
32. You don’t get to choose not to pay a price, you only get to choose which price you pay
Jordan B. Peterson
33. We require rules, standards, values— alone and together. We’re pack animals, beasts of burden. We must bear a load, to justify our miserable existence.
Jordan B. Peterson
34. The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.
Jordan B. Peterson
35. Maybe your misery is the weapon you brandish in your hatred for those who rose upward while you waited and sank. Maybe your misery is your attempt to prove the world’s injustice, instead of the evidence of your own sin, your missing of the mark, your conscious refusal to strive and live.
Jordan B. Peterson
36. Chaos is where we are when we don’t know where we are, and what we are doing when we don’t know what we are doing. It is, in short, all those things and situations we neither know nor understand.
Jordan B. Peterson
37. Your inaction, inertia and cynicism removes from the world that part of you that could learn to quell suffering and make peace.
Jordan B. Peterson
38. Be grateful in spite of your suffering.
Jordan B. Peterson
39. Self-love is the antidote to the chaos of existence. And if you don’t love and care for yourself and your own needs, you will cause unnecessary suffering for both yourself and others.
Jordan B. Peterson
40. In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual.
Jordan B. Peterson
41. The more radical the necessary change the more pain that accompanies it.
Jordan B. Peterson
42. Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to identification with the devil.
Jordan B. Peterson
43. Weak and miserable as I am, I can still stand up to the terrible tragedy of life and prevail.
Jordan B. Peterson
44. Who do you want to be when there’s a crisis? Do you want to be the person that everyone can turn to for strength? Why the hell not? Why not that as a goal? That’d be good goal. Because then when there’s a crisis, it won’t be such a bloody crisis because there’s someone there that can deal with it.
Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson’s Quotes on Life
Peterson is one of the most frequently cited researchers in his domain, and the subsequent quotes from Jordan Peterson regarding life stem from his extensive published literature. Employ these Jordan Peterson quotes to contemplate how you can embrace a life of utmost fulfillment and vitality.
45. The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.
Jordan B. Peterson
46. Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.
Jordan B. Peterson
47. 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 will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with (and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse).
Jordan B. Peterson
48. Face the demands of life voluntarily. Respond to a challenge, instead of bracing for catastrophe.
Jordan B. Peterson
49. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated.
Jordan B. Peterson
50. He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.
Jordan B. Peterson
51. Life without law remains chaotic, effectively intolerable. Life that is pure law becomes sterile, equally unbearable. The domination of chaos or sterility equally breeds murderous resentment and hatred.
Jordan B. Peterson
52. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.
Jordan B. Peterson
53. If your life isn’t everything it could be.. [stop] wasting all of the opportunities that are in front of you.
Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson’s Quotes on Success
Let us present a selection of paramount Jordan Peterson quotes on achieving success. These quotes by Jordan B. Peterson serve as exemplary illustrations of how attaining success is often a consequential outcome of the caliber of your endeavors. Absorb invaluable insights by perusing these sagacious words from Dr. Peterson.
54. You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.
Jordan B. Peterson
55. People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.
Jordan B. Peterson
56. You don’t get to choose not to pay a price, you only get to choose which price you pay.
Jordan B. Peterson
57. If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?
Jordan B. Peterson
58. Women select men. That makes them nature because nature is what selects. And you can say, Well it’s only symbolic that women are nature, it’s like no, it’s not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can’t get more like nature than that, in fact it’s the very definition of nature.
Jordan B. Peterson
59. Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
Jordan B. Peterson
60. I think that if you’re resentful something is definitely wrong. Either you need to grow the hell up and take stock of your life or you have some things to say to people that you haven’t been saying.
Jordan B. Peterson
61. If you’re going to be successful you need to be smart, conscientious, and tough.
Jordan B. Peterson
62. The successful among us delay gratification and bargain with the future.
Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson Love Quotes
63. Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated.
Jordan B. Peterson
64. It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.
Jordan B. Peterson
65. Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption.
Jordan B. Peterson
66. One of the things I’ve told men over and over and over and over is if you’re being rejected by all the women that you approach, it’s not the women!
Jordan B. Peterson
67. If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.
Jordan B. Peterson
68. Truth is the handmaiden of love.
Jordan B. Peterson
69. If you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.
Jordan B. Peterson
70. You have to treat yourself like you matter because if you don’t then you don’t take care of yourself and you become vengeful and cruel and you take it out on people around you and you are not a positive force. None of that is good…you suffer more and so does everyone else around you.
Jordan B. Peterson
71. Intolerance of others’ views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or, possibly, dangerous.
Jordan B. Peterson
72. Assume that the person you’re listening to knows something you don’t.
Jordan B. Peterson
73. If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.
Jordan B. Peterson
74. We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really think about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.
Jordan B. Peterson
75. Women select men. That makes them nature because nature is what selects. And you can say, Well it’s only symbolic that women are nature, it’s like no, it’s not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can’t get more like nature than that, in fact it’s the very definition of nature.
Jordan B. Peterson
76. All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents.
Jordan B. Peterson
77. Make friends with people who want the best for you.
Jordan B. Peterson
Concluding this compilation are the foremost Jordan Peterson quotes of all time.
Peterson’s expressions diverge from the typical optimistic and uplifting viewpoint on existence. As you’ve likely observed, some of his most impactful quotes delve into somber realms.
Yet, this aspect could be why his message has struck a chord with numerous individuals, myself included. He doesn’t evade the reality that there are valid grounds for feeling anxious and discouraged daily.
He goes as far as to assert that it would be irrational not to confront these emotions, given the often harsh nature of the world.
Simultaneously, he contends that embracing accountability and crafting a purposeful life are the sole means to render such tribulations endurable.
