If you enjoy scrolling through Tik Tok and Instagram reels as a way of sweet escape from boring mundane life, chances are you have stumbled across some of Jordan Peterson’s inspirational speeches.
Today’s article brings you a collection of the 80 most famous and eye-opening Jordan Peterson quotes that will make you rethink your whole existence.
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian-born professor of psychology and one of the most influential modern-day philosophers.
You may agree or disagree with him, but one thing is sure – he will grab your attention in a split second. And probably keep you hooked and coming back for more.
Known for his sharp and critical way of thinking and willingness to tackle issues that are carefully approached by others, he has quickly gained worldwide recognition and fame.
Some years ago, while coming out from a challenging life phase, I discovered his newly published self-help book 12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos. The book left me with more questions than answers, but, in my opinion, that is exactly what it is supposed to do.
Seeing how popular Jordan Peterson is today has inspired me to make this article for you.
I’ve gathered the best Jordan Peterson quotes from different sources on the web. Let’s take a look!
Top 10 Jordan Peterson Quotes
It’s not easy to pick only 10 top quotes because everything Jordan say is quite impressive.
Nevertheless, after careful research, I chose 10 Jordan Peterson quotes I believe everyone should read.
1. “Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.” — Jordan Peterson
2. “Truth is the handmaiden of love.” — Jordan Peterson
3. “No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.” — Jordan Peterson
4. “It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order.” — Jordan Peterson
5. “In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.” — Jordan Peterson
6. “To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.” — Jordan Peterson
7. “Whether the gods are inside or outside makes very little difference to whether there are gods.” — Jordan Peterson
8. “We have to rediscover the eternal values and then live them out.” — Jordan Peterson
9. “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” — Jordan Peterson
10. “Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.” — Jordan Peterson
See also: 120 Follow Your Dreams Quotes To Keep You On The Track
Famous Quotes By Jordan B. Peterson
Next up is a collection of some of the most famous Jordan Peterson quotes that have been cited countless times, and it is for a reason. Take a look!
1. “If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self. When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” — Jordan Peterson
2. “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 Peterson
3. “Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world.” — Jordan 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 Peterson
5. “It takes careful observation, and education, and reflection, and communication with others, just to scratch the surface of your beliefs.” — Jordan Peterson
6. “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 Peterson
7. “Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.” — Jordan Peterson
8. “There were some great clinicians in the 20th century – great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius – there’s a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s.” — Jordan Peterson
9. “But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there’s nothing freeing about that.” — Jordan Peterson
10. “If you fail to understand evil, then you have laid yourself bare to it. You are susceptible to its effects, or to its will.” — Jordan Peterson
11. “And you must be cautious, because making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful.” — Jordan Peterson
12. “If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.” — Jordan Peterson
13. “A certain amount of creativity and rebellion must be tolerated – or welcomed, depending on your point of view – to maintain the process of regeneration. Every rule was once a creative act, breaking other rules.” — Jordan Peterson
14. “It is our responsibility to see what is before our eyes, courageously, and to learn from it, even if it seems horrible—even if the horror of seeing it damages our consciousness, and half-blinds us. The act of seeing is particularly important when it challenges what we know and rely on, upsetting and destabilizing us.” — Jordan Peterson
15. “Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness.” — Jordan Peterson
Powerful Jordan Peterson Quotes To Inspire You
Below you’ll find a selection of powerful Jordan Peterson quotes that will spark your inspiration and desire to become a better version of yourself.
1. “When you start to realize how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.” — Jordan Peterson
2. “Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.” — Jordan Peterson
3. “Don’t be a slave to stupid rules.” — Jordan Peterson
4. “Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.” — Jordan Peterson
5. “The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.” — Jordan Peterson
6. “Become aware of your own insufficiency.” — Jordan Peterson
7. “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 Peterson
8. “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 Peterson
9. “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 Peterson
10. “Conscious human malevolence can break the spirit even tragedy could not shake.” — Jordan Peterson
11. “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 Peterson
12. “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 Peterson
13. “Taking the easy way out or telling the truth – those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.” — Jordan Peterson
14. “You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t over-estimate your self-knowledge.” — Jordan Peterson
15. “It’s a luxury to pursue what makes you happy; it’s a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.” — Jordan Peterson
See also: Ultimate Collection Of 60 Do What Makes You Happy Quotes
Motivational Jordan Peterson Quotes
If you’re looking for inspirational quotes to boost your motivation, take a look at these Jordan Peterson quotes.
He is known for helping people build successful lives, so I’m sure these quotes will be a huge inspiration.
1. “We are all human. That means there is something about our experience that is the same. Otherwise, we would not all be human.” — Jordan Peterson
2. “Dare, instead, to be dangerous. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express (or at least become aware of) what would really justify your life.” — Jordan Peterson
3. “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 Peterson
4. “Be grateful in spite of your suffering.” — Jordan Peterson
5. “Stop saying those things that make you weak and ashamed. Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honor.” — Jordan Peterson
6. “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 Peterson
7. “Success at a given endeavor often means trying, falling short, recalibrating (with the new knowledge generated painfully by the failure), and then trying again and falling short – often repeated, ad nauseam.” — Jordan Peterson
See also: 220 Best Proverbs About Success To Give You Inspiration
8. “An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety because if you have no aim everything can mean anything or nothing, and neither of those two options makes for a tranquil spirit. Thus, we have to think, and plan, and limit, and posit, in order to live at all.” — Jordan Peterson
9. “If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons. If you’re going to stand your ground, you better have your reasons. You better have thought them through. You might otherwise be in for a very hard landing.” — Jordan Peterson
10. “There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.” — Jordan Peterson
11. “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 Peterson
12. “Can you imagine yourself in 10 years if, instead of avoiding the things you know you should do, you actually did them every single day? That’s powerful.” — Jordan Peterson
13. “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. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It’s asking a lot.” — Jordan Peterson
14. “A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known—that’s sin.” — Jordan Peterson
15. “You might be winning, but you’re not growing; and growing might be the most important form of winning.” — Jordan Peterson
See also: 100 Growth Mindset Quotes For Those Who Want To Succeed
Jordan Peterson Quotes On The Purpose Of Life
We all have different purposes and while no one can tell you what your life’s purpose is, these deep and meaningful quotes by Jordan Peterson can help you find your answers.
1. “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 Peterson
2. “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.” — Jordan Peterson
3. “You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would. Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. You should never give up the better that resides within for the security you already have—and certainly not when you have already caught a glimpse, an undeniable glimpse, of something beyond.” — Jordan Peterson
4. “Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.” — Jordan Peterson
5. “The secret to your existence is right in front of you. It manifests itself as all those things you know you should do, but are avoiding.” — Jordan Peterson
6. “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.” — Jordan Peterson
7. “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 Peterson
8. “So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.” — Jordan Peterson
9. “If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward.” — Jordan Peterson
10. “Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.” — Jordan Peterson
Thought-Provoking Quotes By Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson is not afraid to provoke. As I previously stated, you may or may not agree with him, but these thought-provoking Jordan Peterson quotes are worth reading.
1. “Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living – and the Ideal shames us all.” — Jordan Peterson
2. “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.” — Jordan Peterson
3. “There’s a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite. And agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.” — Jordan Peterson
4. “It is necessary to be strong in the face of death because death is intrinsic to life. It is for this reason that I tell my students: aim to be the person at your father’s funeral that everyone, in their grief and misery, can rely on. There’s a worthy and noble ambition: strength in the face of adversity.” — Jordan Peterson
See also: 40 Inspiring Faith Over Fear Quotes To Make You Fearless
5. “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.” — Jordan Peterson
6. “People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare—just like true listening. Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world.” ― Jordan Peterson
7. “Making happiness the key pursuit in life is just hopeless. It’s just not a pursuit that’s going to fulfill itself. Life is already complex enough to make us anxious, painful, disappointed and hurt; that’s not a pessimistic viewpoint; it’s the truth.” — Jordan Peterson
8. “When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future. Then you disturb others, in the depths of their souls, where they understand that their cynicism and immobility are unjustifiable. You play Abel to their Cain.” — Jordan Peterson
9. “You need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood, and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering.” — Jordan Peterson
10. “Violence, after all, is no mystery. It’s peace that’s the mystery. Violence is the default. It’s easy. It’s peace that is difficult: learned, inculcated, earned.” — Jordan Peterson
11. “Those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly an unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?” — Jordan Peterson
12. “You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.” — Jordan Peterson
13. “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. Maybe your willingness to suffer in failure is inexhaustible, given what you use that suffering to prove. Maybe it’s your revenge on Being. How exactly should I befriend you when you’re in such a place? How could I? …. Maybe I should at least wait, to help you, until it’s clear that you want to be helped.” — Jordan Peterson
14. “You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse.” — Jordan Peterson
15. “When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.” — Jordan Peterson
Closing Thoughts
These brilliant, often provoking Jordan Peterson quotes show why he is one of the most influential and cited authors today.
If you are inspired by these quotes, I suggest listening to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast where he appeared as a guest.
Until next time!
Read next: Brilliant List Of 120 Light Quotes To Awaken Your Mind
