Quotes from Jonathan Rauch

Indeed, one modern President abjured God altogether, ending speeches with a chaste 'Thank you very much.' This was Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely devout President of the postwar period.

Parties and political systems used to be about excluding renegades who would never play well with others in government. Now it's actually systematically screening them in.

We don't have a crisis of leadership in Washington. We have a crisis of followership.

In a liberal scientific society, to claim that you are above error is the height of irresponsibility.

A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism (no final say); it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.

Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing as compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business of being offended.

the plural of "anecdote" is "data.

For not only is wiping out bias and hate impossible in principle, in practice eliminating prejudice through central authority means eliminating all but one prejudice—that of whoever is most politically powerful.

people don't always understand their own true desires and feelings, and, even if they do, they might not give a straight answer.

What the country faces is not a crisis of leadership but a crisis of followership.

Minorities are always better off in a culture which protects dissent than in a culture which protects us from dissent.

In a conflict of opinion between Einstein and a fool, one wishes for Einstein to prevail. And in a conflict between Einstein and thousand fools or a million, one wishes all the more for Einstein to prevail.

Fundamentalism—the intellectual style, not the religious movement—is the strong disinclination to take seriously the notion that you might be wrong.

Transactional politics is not always appropriate or effective, but a political system which is not reliably capable of it is a system in a state of critical failure. Deal-making

An Ivy League teacher told me, "I've found that if students have an opportunity to jump on someone, they usually take it.

Anyone—pope, propagandist, anti-Communist, anti-racist—who wants to silence criticism or regulate an argument in order to keep wrong-thinking people out of power has no moral claim to be anything but ignored.

Voyage set, there to be encountered by millions, one of whom was me.

As Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf put it, propaganda "must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.… [P]ersistence is the first and most important

In times of stress, psychological pressures compel us to deny or dismiss inconsistent evidence, pushing us to perceive certainty and clarity where there is neither.

how aging equips us to be happier and kinder, even as our bodies get frailer. I'll introduce social thinkers and reformers who are exploring and mapping a whole new stage of adult development.

The curve seems to be imprinted on us as a way to repurpose us for a changing role in society as we age, a role that is less about ambition and competition, and more about connection and compassion.

Society, not science, determines what is normal in the lives we lead, and that, right now, is the problem.

This kind of short-term state of mind is called affective happiness; it relates to affect, our momentary emotions.

How satisfied are you with your life? How does your life compare with the best possible life you could imagine for yourself?