63 Life-Changing Quotes from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson

I enjoy reading psychology books so I recently chose to read 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Written by clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, the book is an interesting read. If you are a JP fan then you will definitely love this.

Here are the sentences that I liked in the book.

''Life is suffering. That’s clear. There is no more basic, irrefutable truth.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''You deserve some respect. 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 B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''People are bullied because they won’t fight back.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''People, like lobsters, size each other up, partly in consequence of stance. 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.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''If you say no, early in the cycle of oppression, and you mean what you say (which means you state your refusal in no uncertain terms and stand behind it) then the scope for oppression on the part of oppressor will remain properly bounded and limited. The forces of tyranny expand inexorably to fill the space made available for their existence.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Just when things seem secure, the unknown can loom, unexpectedly and large. Conversely, just when everything seems lost, new order can emerge from catastrophe and chaos.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Depressed people,can start feeling useless and burdensome, as well as grief-stricken and pained.This makes them withdraw from contact with friends and family. Then the withdrawal makes them more lonesome and isolated, and more likely to feel useless and burdensome. Then they withdraw more. In this manner, depression spirals and amplifies.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Life is suffering. If you are suffering, or someone close to you is, that’s sad. But alas, it’s not particularly special. We don’t suffer only because 'politicians are dimwitted,' or 'the system is corrupt,' It is because we are born human that we are guaranteed a good dose of suffering.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''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, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''when well-meaning counsellors place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability. Down is a lot easier than up.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Before you help someone, you should find out why that person is in trouble.You shouldn’t merely assume that he or she is a noble victim of unjust circumstances and exploitation. It’s the most unlikely explanation, not the most probable. if you buy the story that everything terrible just happened on its own, with no personal responsibility on the part of the victim, you deny that person all agency in the past (and, by implication, in the present and future, as well). In this manner, you strip him or her of all power.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''If we wish to take care of ourselves properly, we would have to respect ourselves —but we don’t, because we are—not least in our own eyes—fallen creatures. If we lived in Truth; if we spoke the Truth—then we could walk with God once again, and respect ourselves, and others, and the world. Then we might treat ourselves like people we cared for. ''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do. There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment. Your colleague outperforms you at work. His wife, however, is having an affair, while your marriage is stable and happy. Who has it better? The celebrity you admire is a chronic drunk driver and bigot. Is his life truly preferable to yours?''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''It’s easier in the moment to stay silent and avoid conflict. But in the long term, that’s deadly. When you have something to say, silence is a lie—and tyranny feeds on lies. When should you push back against oppression, despite the danger? When you start nursing secret fantasies of revenge; when your life is being poisoned and your imagination fills with the wish to devour and destroy.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''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, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Modern parents are simply paralyzed by the fear that they will no longer be liked or even loved by their children if they chastise them for any reason. They want their children’s friendship above all, and are willing to sacrifice respect to get it. This is not good. A child will have.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''It is an act of responsibility to discipline a child. It is not anger at misbehavior. It is not revenge for a misdeed. It is instead a careful combination of mercy and long-term judgment. Proper discipline requires effort—indeed, is virtually synonymous with effort. It is difficult to pay careful attention to children. It is difficult to figure out what is wrong and what is right and why. It is difficult to formulate just and compassionate strategies of discipline, and to negotiate their application with others deeply involved in a child’s care.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Negative emotions, like their positive counterparts, help us learn. negative emotions, for all their unpleasantness,protect us. We feel hurt and scared and ashamed and disgusted so we can avoid damage. And we’re susceptible to feeling such things a lot. In fact, we feel more negative about a loss of a given size than we feel good about the same-sized gain. Pain is more potent than pleasure, and anxiety more than hope.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''Parents who refuse to adopt the responsibility for disciplining their children think they can just opt out of the conflict necessary for proper child-rearing.They avoid being the bad guy (in the short term). But they do not at all rescue or protect their children from fear and pain. Quite the contrary: the judgmental and uncaring broader social world will mete out conflict and punishment far greater than that which would have been delivered by an awake parent. You can discipline your children, or you can turn that responsibility over to the harsh,uncaring judgmental world—and the motivation for the latter decision should never be confused with love.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''people who experience evil may certainly desire to perpetuate it, to pay it forward. But it is also possible to learn good by experiencing evil. A bullied boy can mimic his tormentors. But he can also learn from his own abuse that it is wrong to push people around and make their lives miserable. ''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is. Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Life is indeed 'nasty, brutish and short',... But man’s capacity for evil makes it worse.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


'' Sacrifice now, to gain later. sacrifices are necessary, to improve the future, and larger sacrifices can
be better.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''The lust for blood, rape and destruction is very much part of power’s attraction. It is not only that men desire power so that they will no longer suffer. It is not only that they desire power so that they can overcome subjugation to want, disease and death. Power also means the capacity to take vengeance, ensure submission, and crush enemies.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''There are many problems that money does not solve, and others that it makes worse. Rich people still divorce each other, and alienate themselves from their children, and suffer from existential angst, and develop cancer and dementia, and die alone and unloved. Recovering addicts cursed with money blow it all in a frenzy of snorting and drunkenness. And boredom weighs heavily on people who have nothing to do.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Each human being has an immense capacity for evil. Each human being understands, a priori, perhaps not what is good, but certainly what is not. And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. If the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced—then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. The good is whatever stops such things from happening.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Expedience—that’s hiding all the skeletons in the closet. That’s covering the blood you just spilled with a carpet. That’s avoiding responsibility. It’s cowardly,and shallow, and wrong. It’s wrong because mere expedience, multiplied by many repetitions, produces the character of a demon. It’s wrong because expedience merely transfers the curse on your head to someone else, or to your future self, in a manner that will make your future, and the future generally,worse instead of better.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice.To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt. Forest fires burn out deadwood and return trapped elements to the soil. Sometimes, however, fires are suppressed, artificially. That does not stop the deadwood from accumulating. Sooner or later, a fire will start. When it does, it will burn so hot that everything will be destroyed—even the soil in which the forest grows.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''The difficulties intrinsic to life itself are sufficient to weaken and overwhelm each of us, pushing us beyond our limits, breaking us at our weakest point. Not even the best-lived life provides an absolute defence against vulnerability. But the family that fights in the ruins of their earthquakedevastated dwelling place is much less likely to rebuild than the family made strong by mutual trust and devotion. Any natural weakness or existential challenge, no matter how minor, can be magnified into a serious crisis with enough deceit in the individual, family or culture.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''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 B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''It is reasonable to do what other people have always done, unless we have a very good reason not to. It is reasonable to become educated and work and find love and have a family. That is how culture maintains itself. But it is necessary to aim at your target, however traditional, with your eyes wide open. You have a direction, but it might be wrong.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''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.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness.See the truth. Tell the truth.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''Psychotherapy is not advice. Advice is what you get when the person you’re talking with about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence. If you weren’t so stupid, after all, you wouldn’t have your stupid problems.Psychotherapy is genuine conversation. Genuine conversation is exploration,articulation and strategizing. When you’re involved in a genuine conversation, you’re listening, and talking—but mostly listening.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''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. The input of the community is required for the integrity of the individual psyche. To put it another way: It takes a village to organize a mind.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''How do we prepare for catastrophe, when we do not know what to expect, or how to act? We turn from our minds, so to speak—too slow, too ponderous—to our bodies. Our bodies react much faster than our minds.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Don’t hide baby monsters under the carpet. They will flourish. They will grow large in the dark. Then, when you least expect it, they will jump out and devour you. You will descend into an indeterminate, confusing hell, instead of ascending into the heaven of virtue and clarity. Courageous and truthful words will render your reality simple, pristine, well-defined and habitable.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''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, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Confront the chaos of Being. Take aim against a sea of troubles. Specify your destination, and chart your course. Admit to what you want. Tell those around you who you are. Narrow, and gaze attentively, and move forward, forthrightly.Be precise in your speech.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''If they’re healthy, women don’t want boys. They want men. They want someone to contend with; someone to grapple with. If they’re tough, they want someone tougher. If they’re smart, they want someone smarter. They desire someone who brings to the table something they can’t already provide. This often makes it hard for tough, smart, attractive women to find mates: there just aren’t that many men around who can outclass them enough to be considered desirable (who are higher, as one research publication put it, in 'income,education, self-confidence, intelligence, dominance and social position').''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Leave children alone when they are skateboarding.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity. ''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''There are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''What should you do, when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth. ''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''If you say no to your boss, or your spouse, or your mother, when it needs to be said, then you transform yourself into someone who can say no when it needs to be said. ''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''When someone does something you are trying to get them to do, reward them. No grudge after victory.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''parents must reward those attitudes and actions that will bring their child success in the world outside the family, and use threat and punishment when necessary to eliminate behaviors that will lead to misery and failure. ''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


''Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 

''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 B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos 


 ''It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. Make friends with people who want the best for you.''
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos