Jordan Peterson Quotes

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

Sometimes I feel like I have a dozen different people inside of me. I've always been that way, and I've always written stuff down.

Putting somebody else's pants on and pretending to be somebody else is occasionally, as you grow older, horrifying.

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another

I felt like there were two people inside me. I was trying to be somebody I was not, and I was frustrated that people didn't know who I was.

There is your persona and then there's the real you. I was living inside my persona too much.

Like an enemy I knew as intimately as any friend, I came to know the nagging, constant emptiness of the incongruent life. I ignored myself and lived for people, purposes, and goals that weren't my own. I betrayed who I was and instead accepted a fictional substitute that was defined from the outside in.

Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.

I spent so many years trying to become an actor, trying to be a person that I wasn't.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?

Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is.

My whole life has been a lie.

Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

I look back at old photographs and videotapes, and I go, Who was I trying to be? Who was I doing this for?

Basically, we are a whole world of people desperately trying to figure out what is the dark side of our natures and how much can we explore without becoming something else.

I realized that there was something internal that I could gain from pursuing this career as an actor. However, once I got into the business I just really abhorred what this career can drum up inside of a person.

Right after 'Raymond' I had a world-is-my-oyster attitude, but I found out I don't like oysters. I had this existential emptiness. 'What is my purpose? Who am I?' I had a big identity crisis.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'