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

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

Morality often involves tension within the group motivated by competition between different groups.

— Jonathan Haidt

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

Paymaster's point is that we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through what he calls "the myth of pure evil." Of this myth's many parts, the most important are that evildoers are pure in their evil motives (they have no motives for their actions beyond sadism and greed); victims are pure in their victimhood (they did nothing to bring about their victimization); and evil comes from outside and is associated with a group or force that attacks our group. Furthermore, anyone who questions the application of the myth, who dares muddy the waters of moral certainty, is in league with evil.

— Jonathan Haidt

Reasoning can take you wherever you want to go.

— Jonathan Haidt

Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring." (including art, cathedrals, cities, earthworks, etc.?)

— Jonathan Haidt

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

— Jonathan Haidt

Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. Leon Cass

— Jonathan Haidt

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