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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

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Jonathan Haidt
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 19
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Jonathan David Haidt
Philosophy
Psychology
Literature
Realized
Four
Major
Wanted
Figure
Nothing
Later
Years
Meaning
Really
College
Life
Dead

More quotes by Jonathan Haidt

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While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.
Jonathan Haidt
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If you have a personality predisposed to liberalism, you might gravitate more to the artsy crowd or the anti-establishment crowd. And then those peers will affect you, and they will give you values, and you will copy them.
Jonathan Haidt
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Sports is to war as pornography is to sex. We get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives.
Jonathan Haidt
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The psychological origins of love are in attachment to parents and sexual partners. We do not attach to ourselves we do not seek security and fulfillment in ourselves.
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It only takes twenty generations of selective breeding to create large differences or appearance and behavior in other mammals.
Jonathan Haidt
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Happiness doesn't come from getting what you want. It doesn't come from within, either. Happiness comes from *between*--from finding the right relationship between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself.
Jonathan Haidt
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People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything.
Jonathan Haidt
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I got interested in the American culture war back in 2004, and it's one of the only growth stocks I've ever invested in.
Jonathan Haidt
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Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.
Jonathan Haidt
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Morality binds and blinds.
Jonathan Haidt
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The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.
Jonathan Haidt
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Reciprocity is a deep instinct it is the basic currency of social life.
Jonathan Haidt
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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
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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
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Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
Jonathan Haidt
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People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe.
Jonathan Haidt
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The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.
Jonathan Haidt
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If I have a mission in life, it is to convince people that everyone is morally motivated - everyone except for psychopaths.
Jonathan Haidt
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Liberals and conservatives are opponents in the most literal sense, each using the myth of pure evil to demonize the other side and unite there own.
Jonathan Haidt
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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