Jonathan Haidt Quotes

I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.

Starting and feeding into the cultural war is absolutely unequivocally wrong for us as a nation and bad for the conservative movement.

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.

Politics feels, on what I have seen of it, like joining a tribe, and a lot of it is about unspoken ways of behaving.

No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

Men have differed in opinion and been divided into parties by these opinions from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed through all time.

Politics has become a little like football. We cheer for our favorite team no matter how well they are playing.

I tend to personally judge issue by issue rather than sort of endorsing this football-team mentality that we fall into in this country, where it's all about the team.

In BJP & RSS, there are good people I respect, but some are playing dirty games.

There is so much partisan and tribal politics, from not just those seeking office but potential voters as well, that we never get real attempts at solutions to problems.

Getting a lot more Americans interested in politics is not the same as getting a lot more Americans knowledgeable about the workings of democracy or government. It has brought the worldview associated with sports-talk radio to politics; you’ve got a team and you want that team to win, and the other team is always the worst, and the refs are always unfairly treating your side. Heaven forbid you concede that the other team played a better game.

Polarization affects families and groups of friends. Its a paralyzing situation. A civil war of opinion.

I lost my first fight at the Boys Club at 11 years old and quit the team. My mother told me I had to go back because she didn't raise no quitter. I lost a second fight and quit again and still my mother wouldn't let me. She made me go back and try again.

The ACLU is an organization with a long and distinguished history of fighting to protect freedom of speech. On the other hand, in recent years, it has carried its mandate to ever more eccentric and often highly destructive lengths. While is may have been perfectly honorable for Dukakis to belong to the ACLU, it was equally legitimate for Bush to attack him for it. And with what enormous relish he did the job!

I think we're all fighting for the day in which partisan politics is no longer something that is used to attack women's access to health care.

Not all men were meant to dance with dragons.

To have a successful team, you have to have great players of course - but you have to have good personalities and good people as well.

Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. We are all held in a single honor, the brave with the weaklings. A man dies still if he has done nothing, as the one who has done much.

It really never came up, but I think that in present-day America, they're - you know, and I touched on it in the initial clip - is that we are in the middle of this culture war.

I had very little support from any feminist organization. But fortunately my post-marital lover, who had bailed out of academia over political in-fighting, was a one-man support team. He was the one who pushed me to write.

They [Democrats] don't even want us around.

Politicians must pick sides regularly; every time they vote. So it's perhaps natural that they see the world as a battle between competing groups.

George W. Bush has deliberately polarized and divided America for political purposes, politicizing the most basic questions of war and peace for partisan advantage.

I want a trouble-maker for a lover, Blood spiller, blood drinker, a heart of flame, Who quarrels with the sky and fights with fate, Who burns like fire on the rushing sea.

When it comes to partisan politics, everyone is a hypocrite. And all they care about is whether it hurts or helps them ... Is it good or bad for the Democrats? Is it good or bad for the Republicans? Is it good or bad for Jews, or good or bad for blacks, or is it good or bad for women? Is it good or bad for men? Is it good or bad for gays? That's the way people think about issues today. There is very little discussion of enduring principles.