Jonathan Haidt Quotes

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.

Oftentimes, those special brains, the ones that are capable of focusing more intently than others, do so at the expense of emotional maturity

I guess I'm pretty emotional.

There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn’t. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say ‘I think’ we don’t leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

The world is ruled, and the destiny of civilization is established, by the human emotions.

I got interested in the emotions after studying patients who had lost the ability to emote and feel under certain circumstances. Many of those patients also had major impairments in their ability to make decisions.

Emotion is the foundation of reason.

We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.

And in part that's good but then, like any emotion - and this is something we learned from the research as well - there are positive and negative aspects to all of these.

Emotions are not tools of cognition. They tell you nothing about the nature of reality.

For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.

You'll have to learn to control your emotions. They're new, like achild's now, bursting with passion. Never let them fade, or part of you will die. But they cal also destroy you. Hold them dear, but don't let them take hold of you.

Emotional Literacy means being able to recognise what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations. Emotional expression by contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it isn't possible to think. These two things are often confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the idea of the validity of feelings.

I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.

I am proud to be an emotionalist.

We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions.

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

In this world, man has two significant possessions: intelligence and emotion. These two possessions govern our day-to-day life. But very often we see that emotion (ego) gets the upper hand in our life. We know that even if someone is extremely intelligent, when his emotion comes to the fore it will devour him. He is compelled to do what his emotion asks him to do.

I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy.

Life without emotions is like an engine without fuel.

Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought PLUS feelings. Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out.

Everyone has emotions; you just learn to use then and be comfortable with them.

We accept there's an emotional aspect to life. But we're not very developed in our ways of understanding it.

The problem with emotion was that it was clearly something important, but-at least according to the old philosophy-it was something to overcome.