Quote

Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.

Jonathan Haidt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jonathan Haidt
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 19
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Jonathan David Haidt
Mind
Understanding
Differs
World
Simple
Societies
Fact
Righteous
Facts
Morality
Around
Step
Firsts
Toward
First
Steps
Even
Within

More quotes by Jonathan Haidt

Image
If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
If you get something for nothing, part of you may be pleased, but part of you moves your hand to give something back.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
The rider evolved to serve to the elephant.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Democrats talk about programs like Social Security or Medicare, but it's not clear to most voters what Democrats' core moral values are.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
In college, I was dead set on being a philosophy major, because I wanted to figure out the meaning of life. Four years later I realized philosophy had really nothing to say about the meaning of life, and psychology and literature are really where it's at.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Religious experiences are real and common, whether or not God exists, and these experiences often make people whole and at peace.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Many species reciprocate, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Legalizing homosexuality is not the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing everything.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Conservatives tend to see the world more in terms of good-versus-evil and, for some of them, the nightmare is a disarmed citizenry that can be preyed upon by criminals. They know that having a gun in the house would increase the risk of an accident for a member of their family, but they're willing to take that risk.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams … but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Reciprocity is a deep instinct it is the basic currency of social life.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
To understand most important ideas in psychology, you need to understand how the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together to do a job, but who often find themselves working at cross purposes.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
Most of our social nature is like that of other primates - we're mostly out for ourselves.
Jonathan Haidt
Image
If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.
Jonathan Haidt