Haidt Morality Quotes & Sayings

The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs has argued that consequentialists and deontologists worked together to convince Westerners in the twentieth century that morality is the study of moral quandaries and dilemmas. Where the Greeks focused on the character of a person and asked what kind of person we should each aim to become, modern ethics focuses on actions, asking when a particular action is right or wrong ... This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning. If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving. — Jonathan Haidt

I always believed in God, I would go to mass most of the time, but I had no idea of the calling to holiness. — Jim Caviezel

The Chinese sage Mencius made the analogy between morality and food 2,300 years ago when he wrote that "moral principles please our minds as beef and mutton and pork please our mouths."4 In this chapter and the next two, I'll develop the analogy that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. In this analogy, morality is like cuisine: it's a cultural construction, influenced by accidents of environment and history, but it's not so flexible that anything goes. You can't have a cuisine based on tree bark, nor can you have one based primarily on bitter tastes. Cuisines vary, but they all must please tongues equipped with the same five taste receptors.5 Moral matrices vary, but they all must please righteous minds equipped with the same six social receptors. — Jonathan Haidt

When I began my work on how morality varies across the political spectrum, there was a partisan, manipulative element to it. I wanted to help the Democrats win. — Jonathan Haidt

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

But the most important lesson I have learned in my twenty years or research on morality is that nearly all people are morally motivated. Selfishness is a powerful force, particularly in the decisions of individuals, but whenever groups of people come together to make a sustained effort to change the world, you can bet that they are pursuing a vision of virtue, justice, or sacredness. — Jonathan Haidt

I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A. — Jonathan Haidt

I'll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality. It is not a virus or a parasite, as some scientists (the "New Atheists") have argued in recent years. — Jonathan Haidt

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood. — Jonathan Haidt

I've compiled a book from the Internet. It's a book of quotations attributed to the wrong people. — Jerry Seinfeld

Durkheim frequently criticized his contemporaries, such as Freud, who tried to explain morality and religion using only the psychology of individuals and their pairwise relationships. (God is just a father figure, said Freud.) Durkheim argued, in contrast, that Homo sapiens was really Homo duplex, a creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society. — Jonathan Haidt

I quickly realized that there are two main kinds of diversity - demographic and moral ... Once you make this distinction, you see that nobody can coherently even want moral diversity. If you are pro-choice on the issue of abortion, would you prefer that there be a wide variety of opinions and no dominant one? Or would you prefer that everyone agree with you and the laws of the land reflect that agreement? If you prefer diversity on an issue, the issue is not a moral issue for you; it is a matter of personal taste. — Jonathan Haidt

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

Putting this all together, it makes sense that WEIRD philosophers since Kant and Mill have mostly generated moral systems that are individualistic, rule-based, and universalist. That's the morality you need to govern a society of autonomous individuals. — Jonathan Haidt

It was great to work in Ireland because it's such a beautiful country, but it's not particularly easy to film in because the weather changes all the time. — Anjelica Huston

I'm not going!" she screamed, grabbing her mother by the shoulder. But Laura didn't even turn around. She hiccupped, once, and watery vomit splashed onto the floor between her legs. Maggie let go of her mother's shoulder then, her rage replaced not exactly with pity, but with such a tired disgust with her whole pathetic family that she gave up. Kevin never came home at all that night, and the next afternoon, Nanny Ei drove them to O'Hare. — Jessie Ann Foley

Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to consider the possibility that there might really be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society. — Jonathan Haidt

Morality binds and blinds. — Jonathan Haidt

You sittin' here chained to your rockin' chair. — Hoagy Carmichael

Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice. — Jonathan Haidt

Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking. — Jonathan Haidt

If you take home one souvenir from this part of the tour, may I suggest that it be a suspicion of moral monists. Beware of anyone who insists that there is one true morality for all people, times, and places - particularly if that morality is founded upon a single moral foundation. Human societies are complex; their needs and challenges are variable. — Jonathan Haidt

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

[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds. — Jonathan Haidt

If in the 1930s nuclear weapons had been invented and the Allies had been faced by Nazi SS20s and Backfire Bombers, would it then have been morally right to have handed Hitler control of one of the most terrible weapons man has ever made? Would not that have been the one way to ensure that the thousand year Reich became exactly that? Would not unilateralism have given to Hitler the world domination he sought? — Margaret Thatcher

This was my first hint that morality often involves tension within the group linked to competition between different groups. — Jonathan Haidt

BORN TO BE RIGHTEOUS I could have titled this book The Moral Mind to convey the sense that the human mind is designed to "do" morality, just as it's designed to do language, sexuality, music, and many other things described in popular books reporting the latest scientific findings. But I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it's also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental. — Jonathan Haidt