100 Jordan Peterson Quotes On Responsibility, Order, Life

By Maxime Lagacé

Maxime is the founder of WisdomQuotes. He has been collecting quotes since 2004. His goal? To help you develop a calm and peaceful mind. Learn more about him on his about page.

I’ve spent 10+ hours studying the best videos, books, tweets, and blogs from Jordan Peterson.

The result?

100 of the most inspiring Jordan Peterson quotes in this page.

What’s my goal?

To inspire you and present you a profound, intelligent, and articulated human being.

Dr. Peterson is indeed one of the rare who truly took the time to ponder on happiness, meaning, and our complex minds.

Hope you’ll enjoy his deep thoughts on responsibility, order, and life, as much as I did.

Let’s begin!
jordan peterson quotes start stop wrong wisdom

Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes sacrifice could wisdom

You should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes aim determines see wisdom

What you aim at determines what you see. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes die voluntarily born wisdom

To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes successful delay gratification future wisdom

The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future. Jordan Peterson

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jordan peterson quotes posture drooping speak mind wisdom

Attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes decide move unknown wisdom

To decide to move forward courageously into the land of the unknown. That’s one of the secrets to a good life. Jordan Peterson (Source)

jordan peterson quotes overvaluing have wisdom

Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes underestimate hole absence wisdom

Don’t underestimate the hole your absence would leave.⁣ Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes purpose life burden bearing wisdom

The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it. Jordan Peterson

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jordan peterson quotes belief world fix yourself wisdom

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world — a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one — is to fix yourself. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes clean room advice world wisdom

If you can’t even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world? Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes think offensive wisdom

In order to think you have to risk being offensive. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes occupied deep difficult wisdom

You positively need to be occupied with something weighty, deep, profound, and difficult. Jordan Peterson

jordan peterson quotes role destiny world care yourself wisdom

You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. Jordan Peterson

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Jordan Peterson Quotes About Responsibility

jordan peterson quotes stand straight shoulders responsibility wisdom

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…It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality. Jordan Peterson

We have to rediscover the eternal values and then live then out.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life.

We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world.

What’s the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful? The successful sacrifice.

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.

When you have something to say, silence is a lie – and tyranny feeds on lies.

jordan peterson quotes confront fears find wisdom

You’re much better off to confront your fears head on than you are to wait and let them find you. Jordan Peterson

Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong?

Failure is the price we pay for standards and, because mediocrity has consequences both real and harsh, standards are necessary.

The lack of your best hurts everything. (Source)

If you present yourself as defeated, then people will react to you as if you are losing. If you start to straighten up, then people will look at and treat you differently.

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.

Face the demands of life voluntarily. Respond to a challenge, instead of bracing for a catastrophe.

jordan peterson quotes faith courage sacrifice wisdom

There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient. Jordan Peterson

A leader gives articulation to the imagination of the population.

There’s no quick pathways from smart to wise.

If you fulfill your obligations everyday you don’t need to worry about the future.

Face your fears voluntarily: that’s the cure.

Jordan Peterson Quotes About Order

jordan peterson quotes strengthen individual personality wisdom

Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Jordan Peterson

Be precise in your speech. Speech can give structure and re-establish order.

Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honor.

We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown — and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.

Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can’t long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are learning what you still need to know.

jordan peterson quotes place foot understood mastering wisdom

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

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.

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.

Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?

When things fall apart, and chaos re-emerges, we can give structure to it, and re-establish order, through our speech. If we speak carefully and precisely, we can sort things out, and put them in their proper place, and set a new goal, and navigate to it — often communally, if we negotiate; if we reach consensus. If we speak carelessly and imprecisely, however, things remain vague. The destination remains unproclaimed. The fog of uncertainty does not lift, and there is no negotiating through the world.

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.

jordan peterson quotes dont know truth wisdom

When you don’t know what to do, tell the truth. Jordan Peterson

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Jordan Peterson About Meaning, Happiness, And Life

jordan peterson quotes life happy fair meaningful wisdom

Life isn’t supposed to be happy or fair. Life is supposed to be meaningful. Jordan Peterson

Pursue what is meaningful and not what is expedient.

The meaning of your life may be sufficient to keep the corrupting influence of mortal despair at bay.

You already know what you know, unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough.

Good conversation is the best preparation for proper living.

It’s a luxury to pursue what makes you happy; it’s a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.

I will trust you – I will extend my hand to you – despite the risk of betrayal, because it is possible, through trust, to bring out the best in you, and perhaps in me.

Truth will not come in the guise of opinions shared by others, as the truth is neither a collection of slogans nor an ideology. It will instead be personal.

jordan peterson quotes compare yourself yesterday today wisdom

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Jordan Peterson

You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction.

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth.

Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal — an ambition, and a purpose — to limit chaos and make intelligible sense of his or her life.

Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.

Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.

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.

You have to be willing to be a fool to advance.

jordan peterson quotes life meaningful responsibility shoulder wisdom

Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder. Jordan Peterson

Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindely at that.

You have to be willing to lose your life in order to find it.

To journey happily may well be better than to arrive.

Deep Jordan Peterson Quotes

jordan peterson quotes becoming above being wisdom

Always place your becoming above your current being. Jordan Peterson

Every person is deeply flawed.

Worthlessness is the default condition.

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

When someone does something you are trying to get them to do, reward them.

It is because we are born human that we are guaranteed a good dose of suffering. And chances are, if you or someone you love is not suffering now, they will be within five years, unless you are freakishly lucky.

And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.

People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds.

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself.

Not everyone who is failing is a victim, and not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise, although many do, and many manage it.

Sometimes the reason that you’re suffering is because you won’t let go of the thing that’s biting you.

jordan peterson quotes monster learn control wisdom

You should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it. Jordan Peterson

It’s worthwhile to go find the dragon in its lair instead of waiting for it to come and eat you.

If things are not going well for you—well, that might be because, as the most cynical of aphorisms has it, life sucks, and then you die. Before your crisis impels you to that hideous conclusion, however, you might consider the following: Life doesn’t have the problem. You do. At least that realization leaves you with some options. If your life is not going well, perhaps it is your current knowledge that is insufficient, not life itself. Perhaps your value structure needs some serious retooling. Perhaps what you want is blinding you to what else could be. Perhaps you are holding on to your desires, in the present, so tightly that you cannot see anything else — even what you truly need.

Related: The Most Important Lesson You Must Learn In Life | Jordan Peterson Motivation (8-minute YouTube video)

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.

Violence, 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.

You might love people despite their limitations, but you also love them because of their limitations.

I can live with no responsibility whatsoever, but the price I pay is that nothing matters. Or I can reverse it and everything matters, but I have to take the responsibility that is associated with that.

People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking.

jordan peterson quotes people okay more wisdom

I don’t tell people they’re okay the way they are. No, I say you could be way more than you are. Jordan Peterson

That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.

Don’t practice what you don’t want to become.

You’re going to pay a price for everything you do and everything you don’t do.

Maybe it’s not the world that’s at fault. Maybe it’s you.

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.

Related: 100 Short Quotes That Will Inspire You (Fast)

Conclusion

jordan peterson quotes world avoiding things should wisdom

What would the world be like if people stopped avoiding the things they knew they should do? Jordan Peterson

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.

Wish upon a star, and then act properly, in accordance with that aim.

Further Readings

You can learn more about Jordan Peterson on Wikipedia or his website.

Follow him on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.

 

I hope you enjoyed these inspiring and deep Jordan Peterson quotes.

If you did, please share them with a friend today who could benefit from more order in his/her life!

What’s your favorite Jordan Peterson quote? Please tell us in the comment section below!

Table Of Contents

Part 1
Top 15 Images

Part 2
Responsibility
Order
Meaning
Deep

Part 3
Conclusion

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Author Bio

maxime lagace

Maxime Lagacé started collecting quotes in 2004 after he lost his girlfriend in a car accident.

In search of meaning, he dived in the self-improvement world, psychology and trail running.

Books, blogs, quotes and nature became his guide.

He started journaling, reflecting, writing his thoughts, feelings and quotes.

His goal was to understand his pain, his depression, his fears, his lack of motivation and inspiration.

He finished his software engineering degree in 2007 at the École de Technologie Supérieure de Montréal.

A few years later, he started his first website to share his love of quotes.

Maxime is a father of two, husband, and INFJ.

Other notable interests of Maxime are health (mental and physical), meditation, bananas, SEO, human potential, and education.

You can find him on X, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube.

Last update

March 14, 2022

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