Jonathan Haidt Quotes

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

A perverted moral judgment belongs to the dogmatic system.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

Do people get moral when they don't get ahead?

Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

How we become moral and understand good and bad, and how we overcome our impulse towards violence, is all really important to me, as a person.

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

I can only say that, while my own opinions as to ethics do not satisfy me, other people's satisfy me still less.

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

You can't slice up morals.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.