“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“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
“The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“...human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“Reasoning can take you wherever you want to go.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.”
― Jonathan Haidt
“Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself.”
― Jonathan Haidt
"Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brain works so well that our reasoning can work at all."
― Jonathan Haidt
"Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feelings of moral superiority while asking nothing in return. With contempt you don't need to right the wrong (as with anger) or flee the scene (as with fear or disgust). And the best of all, contempt is made to share. Stories about the moral failings of others are among the most common kinds of gossip, they are a stable of talk radio, and they offer a ready way for people to show that they share a common moral orientation."
― Jonathan Haidt
"Reciprocity is a deep instinct; it is the basic currency of social life."
― Jonathan Haidt
"Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants."
― Jonathan Haidt