Jonathan Haidt Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

Conflict Culture Diversity Emotions Feelings Giving Goals

The word religion literally means, in Latin, to link or bind together; and despite the vast variation in the world's religions, Wilson shows that religions always serve to coordinate and orient people's behavior toward each other and toward the group as a whole, sometimes for the purpose of competing with other groups.

Jonathan Haidt

Latin, Mean, People

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.233, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.

Jonathan Haidt

Happiness, People, Good Relationship

112 Copy quote
I think that we Americans, in particular, tend to think too directly about problems. If there's a problem we want to basically go in with a screwdriver or else drop bombs on it. A better way to solve problems is to think indirectly and try to change the environment. So I think you can gain much better self-control not so much by working on yourself as by looking at the situations you're in and the people you hang around, and changing your environment.

Jonathan Haidt

Thinking, People, Trying

Source: bigthink.com

4 Copy quote
Some comedians really are funnier than others. Some people really are more beautiful than others. But these are true only because of the kinds of creatures we happen to be; the perceptual apparatus - apparati - that we happen to have.

Jonathan Haidt

Beautiful, People, Comedian

Interview with Tamler Sommers, www.believermag.com. August 2005.

7 Copy quote
The consistent finding of psychological research is that we are fairly accurate in our perceptions of others. It's our self-perceptions that are distorted because we look at ourselves in a rose-colored mirror.

Jonathan Haidt

Mirrors, Self, Rose

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.66, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.

Jonathan Haidt

Sunshine, People, Water

4 Copy quote
It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called 'openness to experience.' People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable.

Jonathan Haidt

Ideas, Diversity, People

"The moral roots of liberals and conservatives". TED conference, www.ted.com. March 2008.

4 Copy quote
If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix ... Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.

Jonathan Haidt

Religious, Stupid, Thinking

4 Copy quote
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).

Jonathan Haidt

Europe, Generations, Lasts

4 Copy quote
We can call this "the progress principle": Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: "Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing."

Jonathan Haidt

Lying, Goal, Joy

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.84, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship

Jonathan Haidt

Atheist, Practice, Faces

8 Copy quote
I think the greatest work in social psychology from the 1950s and '60s is enormously important. I wish every high school kid could take a course in social psychology. I think we're making enormous strides in understanding the brain. These aren't yet giving us great insights, but I feel like we're on the verge of it. In five or ten years this basically searching the brain is really going to change things.

Jonathan Haidt

Kids, School, Thinking

Source: bigthink.com

7 Copy quote
Legalizing homosexuality is not the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing everything.

Jonathan Haidt

Slippery Slope, Firsts, Steps

Interview with Tamler Sommers, www.believermag.com. August 2005.

6 Copy quote
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

Believe, Keys, People

Jonathan Haidt (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, p.12, Vintage

4 Copy quote
Happiness can only be found within, by breaking attachments to external things and cultivating an attitude of acceptance.

Jonathan Haidt

Happiness, Attitude, Acceptance

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.82, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
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.

Jonathan Haidt

Attachment, Parent, Psychological

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.130, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

Jonathan Haidt

People, Giving, Feelings

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.60, Basic Books

7 Copy quote
Religion and science, for example, are often though to be opponents, but as I have shown, the insights of ancient religions and of modern science are both needed to reach a full understanding of human nature and the conditions of human satisfaction. The ancients may have known little about biology, chemistry, physics, but many were good psychologists.

Jonathan Haidt

Understanding, Example, May

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.241, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
Awe is the emotion of self-transcendence.

Jonathan Haidt

Self, Emotion, Transcendence

Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.202, Basic Books

4 Copy quote
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

Voters, Moral, Social

5 Copy quote
If our goal is to understand the world, to seek a deeper understanding of the world, our general lack of moral diversity here is going to make it harder. Because when people all share values, when people all share morals, they become a team.

Jonathan Haidt

Motivation, Team, Inspiration

6 Copy quote
Do people believe in human rights because such rights actually exist, like mathematical truths, sitting on a cosmic shelf next to the Pythagorean theorem just waiting to be discovered by Platonic reasoners? Or do people feel revulsion and sympathy when they read accounts of torture, and then invent a story about universal rights to help justify their feelings?

Jonathan Haidt

Believe, Pythagorean Theorem, Rights

Jonathan Haidt (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, p.32, Vintage

4 Copy quote
Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world.

Jonathan Haidt

World, Social, Colleagues

4 Copy quote
Anytime we're interacting with someone, we're judging them, we're sharing expectations, we think they didn't live up to those expectations.

Jonathan Haidt

Thinking, Expectations, Judging

"Jonathan Haidt Explains Our Contentious Culture". "Moyers & Company" with Bill Moyers, billmoyers.com. February 3, 2012.

4 Copy quote
Congress is full of good, decent, smart people who have devoted their lives to public service.

Jonathan Haidt

Smart, People, Public Service

5 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Martin Seligman

Richard Shweder

David Sloan Wilson

Lawrence Kohlberg

Latest quotes from interviews

"We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet."

- Jonathan Haidt,

bigthink.com, added Jul 23, 2017

More (26)

Jonathan Haidt

Follow

Born: October 19, 1963
Occupation: Psychologist
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics