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" 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. "

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" While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you. "

Jonathan Haidt

You

Feelings

Impact

" The big breakthrough for me was, once I stopped disliking conservatives and could actually see what they were right about, they showed me a lot of things that liberals were wrong about. But at the same time, I think there are some things that liberals are right about that conservatives have trouble seeing. "

" In accounts of men in battle, there is an incredible adrenaline rush from group-versus-group conflict. The fervor and passion of partisans is clearly rewarding; and if it's rewarding, it involves dopamine; and if it involves dopamine, then it is potentially addictive. "

" 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. "

" On the religious Right and religious people in general have the feeling that the world is not just material, the world is not just there for us to do what we want with. That our bodies, things have an immaterial essence, a spiritual essence that God is in all of us. "

" 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. "

" Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree. "

" There's an enormous difference between voting for a candidate because you hate another ethnic group and voting for a candidate because he's a member of your ethnic group. "

Jonathan Haidt

Voting

You

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

" We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way. "

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

" When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, that's fine. But when you start hearing motive-mongering and demonization, stand up to it just as you would if it were something that was racist or sexist. If we avoid the demonization, disagreements can be positive. "

" Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up? "

" Politics is really religion. Politics is about sacredness. Politics is about offering a vision that will bind the nation together to pursue greatness. "

" Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues. "

" 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. "

" Dividing into teams doesn't necessarily mean denigrating others. Studies of groupishness have generally found that groups increase in-group love far more than they increase out-group hostility. "

Jonathan Haidt

Found

Far

" Even if you have a brain predisposed to liberalism, you might end up with some conservative friends or find inspiring conservative role models who could be very influential on you, and that could send you down a different track in life. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I got interested in the American culture war back in 2004, and it's one of the only growth stocks I've ever invested in. "

" When I think about life on Earth, there should not be a species like us. And if there was, we should be out in the jungle killing each other in small groups. That's what you should expect. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness. "

" Most of our social nature is like that of other primates - we're mostly out for ourselves. "

Jonathan Haidt

Social

Nature

" Democrats talk about programs like Social Security or Medicare, but it's not clear to most voters what Democrats' core moral values are. "

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