Top 280 Jonathan Haidt Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas – to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to – then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.”

— Jonathan Haidt

252. “People don’t get depressed when they face threats collectively; they get depressed when they feel isolated, lonely, or useless.”

— Jonathan Haidt

253. “There is a hole, an emptiness in us all, that we strive to fill. If it doesn’t get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage. That has been true since the beginning of the age of mass media, but the garbage pump got 100 times more powerful in the 2010s. It matters what we expose ourselves to.”

— Jonathan Haidt

254. “Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.”

— Jonathan Haidt

255. “Synchronous, face-to-face, physical interactions and rituals are a deep, ancient, and underappreciated part of human evolution.”

— Jonathan Haidt

256. “Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development.”

— Jonathan Haidt

257. “The reduction is so severe that we might refer to smartphones and tablets in the hands of children as experience blockers.”

— Jonathan Haidt

258. “Stress wood is a perfect metaphor for children, who also need to experience frequent stressors in order to become strong adults.”

— Jonathan Haidt

259. “This is the great irony of social media: the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become.”

— Jonathan Haidt

260. “Socially prescribed perfectionism is closely related to anxiety; people who suffer from anxiety are more prone to it. Being a perfectionist also increases your anxiety because you fear the shame of public failure from everything you do. And, as you’d expect by this point in the story, socially prescribed perfectionism began rising, across the Anglosphere nations, in the early 2010s.”

— Jonathan Haidt

261. “We don’t let preteens buy tobacco or alcohol, or enter casinos. The costs of using social media, in particular, are high for adolescents, compared with adults, while the benefits are minimal. Let children grow up on Earth first, before sending them to Mars.”

— Jonathan Haidt

262. “It is impossible to analyze “the meaning of life” in the abstract, or in general, or for some mythical and perfectly rational being. Only by knowing the kinds of beings that we actually are, with the complex mental and emotional architecture that we happen to possess, can anyone even begin to ask about what would count as a meaningful life.”

— Jonathan Haidt

263. “Even atheists have intimations of sacredness, particularly when in love or in nature. We just don’t infer that God caused those feelings.”

— Jonathan Haidt

264. “In my 35 years of studying moral psychology, I have come to see this as one of humanity’s greatest problems: we are too quick to anger and too slow to forgive. We are also hypocrites who judge others harshly while automatically justifying our own bad behavior.”

— Jonathan Haidt

265. “Girls in virtual networks are subjected to hundreds of times more social comparison than girls had experienced for all of human evolution. They are exposed to more cruelty and bullying because social media platforms incentivize and facilitate relational aggression. Their openness and willingness to share emotions with other girls espouses them to depression and other disorders. The twisted incentive structures of social media reward the most extreme presentations of symptoms.”

— Jonathan Haidt

266. “The phone-based life makes it difficult for people to be fully present with others when they are with others, and to sit silently with themselves when they are alone.”

— Jonathan Haidt

267. “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.”

— Jonathan Haidt

268. “I believe that an evolutionary approach specifying the foundation of our moral sense can allow us to appreciate Hindu and Muslim cultures where women are veiled and seem to us to lead restricted lives.”

— Jonathan Haidt

269. “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.”

— Jonathan Haidt

270. “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

271. “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?”

— Jonathan Haidt

272. “If you get something for nothing, part of you may be pleased, but part of you moves your hand to give something back.”

— Jonathan Haidt

273. “Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree.”

— Jonathan Haidt

274. “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

275. “When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, thats 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.”

— Jonathan Haidt

276. “Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world.”

— Jonathan Haidt

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

— Jonathan Haidt

278. “People are wrong when they say that everything should be more diverse, even, say, rock bands. It’s an error, an overgeneralization.”

— Jonathan Haidt

279. “America is very much about individual happiness, the right to expression, self-determination. In America you do need to point to harm befalls victims before you can limit someone else’s rights.”

— Jonathan Haidt

280. “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.”

— Jonathan Haidt