Jonathan Haidt Quotes

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

What makes people laugh? . . . It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.

You give yourself to the world for people to either praise or destroy.

That's my real message: I work very hard. We're an honest presentation, we try to give people entertainment and information at the same time, and it's working. I don't see any need for big drastic changes in our presentation.

Comedy is lively, comedy is joy, and that's what keeps us [people] going, we've got to look forward to little, little happiness's. Little, little joys, and comedy is very, very important, it's a vital. We underestimate its value, but we should see more comedies. Comedy is life giving, it's invigorating. I really believe it.

Many species reciprocate, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.

My feeling has always been if you entertain people, they give you permission to do more on a thematic or character level.

I'm smart enough to know when I've done something wrong, but I don't understand this. Guys are beating their wives, getting DUIs and doing drugs, and I get national attention for a Sharpie? People are personally attacking me, calling me a classless asshole because I did something creative during a game. Why?

I spoil a lot of people with my play.

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.

The world of rumors and gossip is a world of wish fulfillment. And one of the things that gives volume and amplitude to a rumor is that it satisfies people's dreams and expectations about the world...

I was looking for Quincy Jones, that's who I was obsessed with. Watching Mike [Jackson], I always knew that I had to be a showman on stage, because when people come to you live you always want them to come back. You gotta give them something to remember.

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

Honestly, I just want to keep people awake. Or at least give you one joke to go to bed with.

I'm trying to, with my stand-up and with the podcast, give people these little stupid things to give them happiness. I know that sounds lofty or like I'm starting a cult, but I kind of feel that way.

The whole idea of music, from the beginning of time, was for people to be happy

Gossip is a kind of misalignment with people around you. You can either gossip about everyone, or you can become one with everyone.

I feel things can always be funny, but that's probably because I have some kind of leftover childhood need to make people laugh. For somebody like me, that's the thing you excel at.

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

Everyone's going to have a racist tweet, a homophobic tweet, a xenophobic tweet, a misogynist tweet. Everyone's going to have a tweet or a post or something that's not going to be ideal, and because of that, you can't really throw stones too hard at the people that do, because if we examined your life in every way, shape, or form, went through every single post with a fine-toothed comb and under that microscope, would it come out all sunshine and lollipops?

You are always looking at people like this.” And then she made a face, one he couldn’t possibly begin to describe. “If I ever look like that,” he said dryly, “precisely like that, to be more precise, I give you leave to shoot me.

Music makes the people come together.

there is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried. I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are not only more fortunate but in some way more moral than you are.

I have an interest in giving people a cathartic experience, and making them look at homeless people differently, and making them question how they judge people, in general.

I give boring people something to discuss over corn.