Tim > Tim's Quotes

“We are each more responsible for the state of the world than we believe, or would feel comfortable believing. Without careful attention, culture itself tilts toward corruption. Tyranny grows slowly, and asks us to retreat in comparatively tiny steps. But each retreat increases the possibility of the next retreat. Each betrayal of conscience, each act of silence (despite the resentment we feel when silenced), and each rationalization weakens resistance and increases the probability of the next restrictive move forward. This is particularly the case when those pushing forward delight in the power they have now acquired—and such people are always to be found. Better to stand forward, awake, when the costs are relatively low—and, perhaps, when the potential rewards have not yet vanished. Better to stand forward before the ability to do so has been irretrievably compromised. Unfortunately, people often act in spite of their conscience—even if they know it—and hell tends to arrive step by step, one betrayal after another. And it should be remembered that it is rare for people to stand up against what they know to be wrong even when the consequences for doing so are comparatively slight. And this is something to deeply consider, if you are concerned with leading a moral and careful life: if you do not object when the transgressions against your conscience are minor, why presume that you will not willfully participate when the transgressions get truly out of hand?”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“You might object, “Well, I just could not manage to take on something that important.” What if you began to build yourself into a person who could? You could start by trying to solve a small problem—something that is bothering you, that you think you could fix. You could start by confronting a dragon of just the size that you are likely to defeat. A tiny serpent might not have had the time to hoard a lot of gold, but there might still be some treasure to be won, along with a reasonable probability of succeeding in such a quest (and not too much chance of a fiery or toothsome death).”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“For that man be delivered from revenge—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise. “What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge”—thus they speak to each other. “We shall wreak vengeange and abuse on all whose equals we are not”—thus do the tarantula-hearts vow. “And ‘will to equality’ shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor!” You preachers of equality, the tyrant-mania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“What shall I do with my wife? Treat her as if she is the Holy Mother of God, so that she may give birth to the world-redeeming hero. What shall I do with my daughter? Stand behind her, listen to her, guard her, train her mind, and let her know it’s OK if she wants to be a mother. What shall I do with my parents? Act such that your actions justify the suffering they endured. What shall I do with my son? Encourage him to be a true Son of God.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“At what exact point, then, should one resist? When one’s belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one’s home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about any one of them individually—especially at a time when the thoughts of the person arrested are wrapped tightly about the big question: “What for?”—and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.”
― Alexander Solschenizyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“And of course, if they pass a law, it's legal. And therefore ethical.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, All These Worlds

“the wonderful thing about knowledge is that you can give it away and still have it.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, Heaven's River

“Don’t make the common mistake of thinking your opponents are stupid just because they don’t see things your way,”
― Dennis E. Taylor, All These Worlds

“Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness. It is much better to make friends with what you do not know than with what you do know, as there is an infinite supply of the former but a finite stock of the latter. When you are tightly boxed in or cornered—all too often by your own stubborn and fixed adherence to some unconsciously worshipped assumptions—all there is to help you is what you have not yet learned.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“The verbal framework that helps us delimit the world is a consequence of the landscape of value that is constructed socially—but also bounded by the brute necessity of reality itself.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“It’s an accumulation. Every day and every thing reminds you that you don’t fit. Starfolk weren’t allowed to be married, or to have kids, but there are so many other obligations that connect a person to their social network and structure. And they haven’t kept up with any of it for twenty-eight years. The profiles from before the starshot and after it are like two different people. These people couldn’t handle it. I’m not sure how many others. It seems to trigger a major depression, even in people selected for personalities that don’t get depressed. I’m calling it Temporal Alienation Syndrome.”
― Colin Alexander, Starman's Saga: The Long, Strange Journey of Leif The Lucky

“Discipline and transformation will nonetheless lead you inexorably forward. With will and luck, you will find a story that is meaningful and productive, improves itself with time, and perhaps even provides you with more than a few moments of satisfaction and joy. With will and luck, you will be the hero of that story, the disciplined sojourner, the creative transformer, and the benefactor of your family and broader society. Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
― Matthew 6:28, The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

“In any case, there are still times when willful blindness nonetheless produces more serious catastrophes, more easily rationalized away, than the active or the unconscious repression of something terrible but understood (the latter being a sin of commission, because it is known). The former problem—willful blindness—occurs when you could come to know something but cease exploring so that you fail to discover something that might cause you substantial discomfort. Spin doctors call this self-imposed ignorance “plausible deniability,” which is a phrase that indicates intellectualized rationalization of the most pathological order.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“force them to discover with as much difficulty as possible exactly what they have done to disappoint you; and, finally, let them grope around blindly in the fog that you have generated around yourself until they stumble into and injure themselves on the sharp hidden edges of your unrevealed preferences and dreams.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Corruption of the form we are discussing is, in my opinion, integrally linked to deception—to lying, more bluntly—and more important, to self-deception.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“If you really loved me, you would brave the terrible landscape that I have arrayed around myself to discover the real me.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Someone with experience knows that people are capable of deception and willing to deceive. That knowledge brings with it an arguably justified pessimism about human nature, personal and otherwise, but it also opens the door to another kind of faith in humanity: one based on courage, rather than naivete. 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.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“But there will be times in your life when it will take everything you have to face what is in front of you, instead of hiding away from a truth so terrible that the only thing worse is the falsehood you long to replace it with.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“the suffering and malevolence that characterize life are real, with the terrible consequences of the real—and our ability to solve problems, by confronting them and taking them on, is also real. By taking responsibility, we can find a meaningful path, improve our personal lot psychologically, and make what is intolerably wrong genuinely better. Thus, we can have our cake and eat it, too.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“That is the nature of our ancestors: immensely courageous hunters, defenders, shepherds, voyagers, inventors, warriors, and founders of cities and states. That is the father you could rescue; the ancestor you could become. And he is to be discovered in the deepest possible place, as that is where you must go if you wish to take full responsibility and become who you could be.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Animals do not seem to consider the future in the same manner as we do. If you visit the African veldt, and you observe a herd of zebras, you will often see lions lazing about around them. And as long as the lions are lying around relaxing, the zebras really do not mind. This attitude seems a little thoughtless, from the human perspective. The zebras should instead be biding their time until the lions go to sleep. Then they should run off to a corner of the field in a herd and conspire a bit. And then several dozen of them should rush the sleeping lions and stomp them to death. That would be the end of the lion problem. But that is not what zebras do. They think, “Ah, look at those relaxed lions! Relaxed lions are never a problem!” Zebras do not seem to have any real sense of time. They cannot conceptualize themselves across the temporal expanse. But human beings not only manage such conceptualization, they cannot shake it. We discovered the future, some long time ago—and now the future is where we each live, in potential. We treat that as reality. It is a reality that only might be—but it is one with a high probability of becoming now, eventually, and we are driven to take that into account.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“What is the antidote to the suffering and malevolence of life? The highest possible goal. What is the prerequisite to pursuit of the highest possible goal? Willingness to adopt the maximum degree of responsibility—and this includes the responsibilities that others disregard or neglect. You might object: “Why should I shoulder all that burden? It is nothing but sacrifice, hardship, and trouble.” But what makes you so sure you do not want something heavy to carry? You positively need to be occupied with something weighty, deep, profound, and difficult. Then, when you wake up in the middle of the night and the doubts crowd in, you have some defense: “For all my flaws, which are manifold, at least I am doing this. At least I am taking care of myself. At least I am of use to my family, and to the other people around me. At least I am moving, stumbling upward, under the load I have determined to carry.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“What my client was perceiving—at least as far as she was concerned—was not a single event, hypothetically capable of heading those involved in it down a dangerous path, but a clearly identifiable and causally related variety or sequence of events, all heading in the same direction. Those events seemed to form a coherent pattern, associated with an ideology that was directional in its intent, explicitly and implicitly.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“When we are called upon to do things that we find hateful and stupid, we are simultaneously forced to act contrary to the structure of values motivating us to move forward stalwartly and protecting us from dissolution into confusion and terror. “To thine own self be true,”1 as Polonius has it, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. That “self”—that integrated psyche—is in truth the ark that shelters us when the storms gather and the water rises. To act in violation of its precepts—its fundamental beliefs—is to run our own ship onto the shoals of destruction. To act in violation of the precepts of that fundamental self is to cheat in the game we play with ourselves, to suffer the emptiness of betrayal, and to perceive abstractly and then experience in embodied form the loss that is inevitably to come.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“If you have acted honorably, so that you are a trustworthy person, it will be your decision to refuse to comply or to act in a manner contrary to public expectation that will help society itself maintain its footing. By doing so you can be part of the force of truth that brings corruption and tyranny to a halt. The sovereign individual, awake and attending to his or her conscience, is the force that prevents the group, as the necessary structure guiding normative social relations, from becoming blind and deadly.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Do not give  wdogs what is holy, and do not throw your  xpearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: English Standard Version

“We have committed an error, or a series of errors. We have spent too much time, for example (much of the last fifty years), clamoring about rights, and we are no longer asking enough of the young people we are socializing. We have been telling them 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”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“God is dead” —Nietzsche. “Nietzsche is dead” —God. Nietzsche did not make this claim in a narcissistic or triumphant manner. The great thinker’s opinion stemmed from his fear that all the Judeo-Christian values serving as the foundation of Western civilization had been made dangerously subject to casual rational criticism, and that the most important axiom upon which they were predicated—the existence of a transcendent, all-powerful deity—had been fatally challenged. Nietzsche concluded from this that everything would soon fall apart, in a manner catastrophic both psychologically and socially.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Perhaps communism may even have been a viable solution to the problems of the unequal distribution of wealth that characterized the industrial age, if all of the hypothetically oppressed were good people and all of the evil was to be found, as hypothesized, in their bourgeoisie overlords. Unfortunately for the communists, a substantial proportion of the oppressed were incapable, unconscientious, unintelligent, licentious, power mad, violent, resentful, and jealous, while a substantial proportion of the oppressors were educated, able, creative, intelligent, honest, and caring. When the frenzy of dekulakization swept through the newly established Soviet Union, it was vengeful and jealous murderers who were redistributing property, while it was competent and reliable farmers, for the most part, from whom it was violently taken. One unintended consequence of that “redistribution” of good fortune was the starvation of six million Ukrainians in the 1930s, in the midst of some of the most fertile land in the world.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life