Quotes from Jonathan Haidt

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.

Religious experiences are real and common, whether or not God exists, and these experiences often make people whole and at peace.

It's a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away.

Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world.

Liberals tend to be much more concerned about business and corporations as the oppressors. They look to government as the solution. On the Right it's the opposite. They see business as good, as what generates wealth in society, and they see government as the oppressor, which makes it hard for especially small businesspeople.

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.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.

The great conservative insight is that order is really hard to achieve. It's really precious, and it's really easy to lose.

Liberals have difficulty understanding the Tea Party because they think it is a bunch of selfish racists. But I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness.

Our moral sense really evolved to bind groups together into teams that can cooperate in order to compete with other teams.

By temperament and disposition and emotions, I'm a liberal; but in my beliefs about what's best for the country, I'm a centrist.

Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism.

I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement.

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.

The most important thing to realize is we're not blank slates at birth. We don't start off with nothing in our heads, and then get imprinted entirely by our environment. There's something in our heads on the day we're born, and then we grow up and make choices.

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams... but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.

If I have a mission in life, it is to convince people that everyone is morally motivated - everyone except for psychopaths.

Sports is to war as pornography is to sex. We get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives.

It's a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away.

The rider evolved to serve to the elephant.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. —BUDDHA

Societies that exclude the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully to what will happen to them over several generations. We don't really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).