Jonathan Haidt Quotes

Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.

My early research - I'm a social psychologist, and my early research was on how people make moral judgments. When I entered the field in 1987, everybody was looking at moral reasoning - how do kids reason about a moral dilemma? Should a guy steal a drug to save his wife's life?

Practical wisdom is what's called for in situations that have a moral dimension to them.

I think that unless you can take judgments of right and wrong like an automaton, you must have emotions because that is our only way of moral guidance.

I don't know how to play evil.

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.

Even a believer in nonviolence has to say between two combatants which is less bad or whose cause is just.

It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person.

Conscience is a just but weak judge. Weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment.

As the mind of each man is conscious of good or evil, so does he conceive within his breast hope or fear, according to his actions.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

Because it's possible to do, and you have the right to do it, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

I can't tell the difference between wrong and right, are you laughing at me?

It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong, and sometimes irrational to do what is right

Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humored, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.

You got to wrestle with your conscience. You got to listen to people. It doesn't come so easy to me that this is right and that's wrong. It's never that simple.

Most men only commit great crimes because of their scruples about petty ones.