Top 40 Jordan Peterson Quotes

I don’t tell people, ‘You’re okay the way that you are.’ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‘You’re way less than you could be.’

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

I do believe that there are places where the mythological and the literal touch.

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

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

Power is competence.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

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.

If you want to occupy the C-suite or the top one-tenth of 1% in any organization, you have to be obsessively devoted to your career at the expense of everything else. And women look at that, and they think, ‘No.’

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

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.

You can’t go backward in life.

I’ve done some analysis of the biblical stories as part of my psychological work. I knew that I had more to do, and every time I’ve done it, it’s been extremely valuable. It makes me a better teacher because I have a richer understanding of cultural history.

I could hardly sit through ‘Frozen.’ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

I think Canadians are more interested in international events than Americans because it is such a small country, so politics affect it more.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

The most propagandistic element of ‘Frozen’ was the transformation of the prince at the beginning of the story, who was a perfectly good guy, into a villain with no character development whatsoever about three-quarters of the way to the ending.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

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

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women.

No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.

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

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

The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

I’ve known for years that the university underserved the community, because we assumed that university education is for 18- to 22-year-olds, which is a proposition that’s so absurd it is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone ever conceptualized it. Why wouldn’t you take university courses throughout your entire life?

If you’re a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis.

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.

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.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

I don’t really regard myself as a political figure.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

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