If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Interpretation
Learning martial arts teaches you both power and restraint.
This quote by Jordan Peterson emphasizes that studying martial arts not only equips you with the skills to defend yourself and be dangerous, but it also instills the importance of self-control and responsibility. It highlights the paradox that with great power comes the necessity to manage that power wisely and not use it recklessly.
In practice
During a self-defense workshop, one might quote Peterson to emphasize the importance of self-control in using martial skills.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
I'm interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.
Bite your lips, little brother...Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now...Wait. Clench your teeth and wait.
I am afraid that Yazidis and Yazidism will vanish and will not be able to resist the extremists.
I wrestled with anger from the age of sixteen. It's still one of my nemeses. I have to remember that the word of God says, 'Be slow to anger.'
It never gets easier to tell your story. Each time you speak it, you relive it.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.
When I was growing up, officers in uniform were very impressive to me. They were doing a job. They were protecting our country; they were heroes. When you wear an old military jacket, there's some sort of connection to those qualities - to being strong, to being tough, to being a warrior.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.