Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path. People have little respect for rules; we respect the moral principles that underlie most rules. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission.

— Jonathan Haidt

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well-educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.

— Jonathan Haidt

If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base, and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own.

— Jonathan Haidt

In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status. . . . Now imagine yourself happily moving around your two-dimensional social world, a flat land where the X axis is closeness and the Y axis is hierarchy. Then one day, you see a person do something extraordinary, or you have an overwhelming experience of natural beauty, and you feel lifted “up.” But it is not the “up” of hierarchy, it’s some other kind of elevation. This chapter is about that vertical movement. My claim is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call “divinity.

— Jonathan Haidt

Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

— 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

I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts.

— Jonathan Haidt

It is not clear that married people are, on average, happier than those who never married, because unhappily married people are the least happy group of all, and they pull down the average.

— Jonathan Haidt

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

Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.

— Jonathan Haidt