# Jordan B. Peterson - Quotes: 48 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson ## Books - [12 Rules for Life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/12-rules-for-life.md) — 16 quotes - [Beyond Order](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order.md) — 29 quotes - [Maps of Meaning](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/maps-of-meaning.md) — 3 quotes ## Recently added quotes > There is an ancient conceit in the book of Genesis (2:21–22) that Eve was taken out of Adam—created from his rib. Woman from man: this presents something of a mystery, reversing, as it does, the normative biological sequence, where males emerge from females at birth. It also gave rise to a line of mythological speculation, attempting to account for the strangeness of this creative act, predicated on the supposition that Adam, the original man produced by God, was hermaphroditic—half masculine and half feminine—and only later separated into the two sexes. This implies not only the partition of a divinely produced unity, but the incompleteness of man and woman until each is brought together with the other. p. 273 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/there-is-an-ancient.md) > People organize their brains with conversation. If they don't have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves. p. 250 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/12-rules-for-life/people-organize-their.md) > If you aim at nothing, you become plagued by everything. p. 184 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/if-you-aim.md) > Ambition is often—and often purposefully—misidentified with the desire for power, and damned with faint praise, and denigrated, and punished. And ambition is sometimes exactly that wish for undue influence on others. But there is a crucial difference between sometimes and always. Authority is not mere power, and it is extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, to confuse the two. When people exert power over others, they compel them, forcefully. They apply the threat of privation or punishment so their subordinates have little choice but to act in a manner contrary to their personal needs, desires, and values. When people wield authority, by contrast, they do so because of their competence—a competence that is spontaneously recognized and appreciated by others, and generally followed willingly, with a certain relief, and with the sense that justice is being served. p. 26 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/ambition-is-often-and.md) > Who dares wins—if he does not perish. And who wins also makes himself irresistibly desirable and attractive, not least because of the development of character that adventure inevitably produces. And this is what makes us forever more than rabbits. p. 80 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/who-dares-wins-if.md) > 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. p. 242 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/12-rules-for-life/it-took-untold.md) > Was it really a good thing, for example, to so dramatically liberalize the divorce laws in the 1960s? It’s not clear to me that the children whose lives were destabilized by the hypothetical freedom this attempt at liberation introduced would say so. Horror and terror lurk behind the walls provided so wisely by our ancestors. We tear them down at our peril. We skate, unconsciously, on thin ice, with deep, cold waters below, where unimaginable monsters lurk. p. 119 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/12-rules-for-life/was-it-really.md) > Freud was, after all, a genius. You can tell that because people still hate him. p. 243 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/12-rules-for-life/freud-was-after.md) > I exposed myself to a larger number of paintings, I like to think, than anyone else in history. For at least four years, starting in 2001, I searched eBay, looking at roughly a thousand paintings a day, seeking the one or two in that number that were of genuine quality. p. 219 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/i-exposed-myself.md) > Much that is great starts small, ignorant, and useless. […] But today’s beginner is tomorrow’s master. p. 18 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/much-that-is-great.md) > That ghostly figure, the ideal union of what is best in both personalities, should be constantly regarded as the ruler of the marriage—and, indeed, as something as close to divine as might be practically approached by fallible individuals. p. 275 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/that-ghostly-figure.md) > We have been telling [young people] for decades to demand what they are owed by society. We have been implying that the important meanings of their lives will be given to them because of such demands, when we should have been doing the opposite: letting them know that the meaning that sustains life in all its tragedy and disappointment is to be found in shouldering a noble burden. p. 161 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jordan-b-peterson/beyond-order/we-have-been.md)