Great Throughts Treasury

"Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason."

"Anytime we're interacting with someone, we're judging them, we're sharing expectations, we think they didn't live up to those expectations."

"By temperament and disposition and emotions, I'm a liberal; but in my beliefs about what's best for the country, I'm a centrist."

"Attachments: Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders."

"[Politics is] about the eternal struggle between good and evil, and we all believe we're on the good team."

"Conservatives tend to see the world more in terms of good-versus-evil and, for some of them, the nightmare is a disarmed citizenry that can be preyed upon by criminals. They know that having a gun in the house would increase the risk of an accident for a member of their family, but they're willing to take that risk."

"Democrats talk about programs like Social Security or Medicare, but it's not clear to most voters what Democrats' core moral values are."

"Congress is full of good, decent, smart people who have devoted their lives to public service."

"Dividing into teams doesn't necessarily mean denigrating others. Studies of groupishness have generally found that groups increase in-group love far more than they increase out-group hostility."

"Even if you have a brain predisposed to liberalism, you might end up with some conservative friends or find inspiring conservative role models who could be very influential on you, and that could send you down a different track in life."

"Gossip and reputation make sure that what comes around-a person who is cruel will find that the others are cruel hack to him, and a person who is kind will find others are kind in return. Gossip paired with reciprocity allow karma to work here on earth, not in the next life."

"Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues."

"Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger thank yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge."

"Here is one of the most profound ideas to come from the ongoing synthesis: People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence."

"Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies."

"Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless."

"Human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee."

"I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A."

"I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts."

"I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement."

"If our goal is to understand the world, to seek a deeper understanding of the world, our general lack of moral diversity here is going to make it harder. Because when people all share values, when people all share morals, they become a team."

"I think whatever is true of aesthetic judgment is true of moral judgment, except that in our moral lives we do need to justify, whereas we don?t generally ask others for justifications of aesthetic judgments."

"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."

"If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness."

"If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you?ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you."

"If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy."

"If you want to change people's minds, you've got to talk to their elephants."

"If you have a personality predisposed to liberalism, you might gravitate more to the artsy crowd or the anti-establishment crowd. And then those peers will affect you, and they will give you values, and you will copy them."

"In accounts of men in battle, there is an incredible adrenaline rush from group-versus-group conflict. The fervor and passion of partisans is clearly rewarding; and if it's rewarding, it involves dopamine; and if it involves dopamine, then it is potentially addictive."

"Is virtue its own reward? Yes, but in the modern West we?ve lost the ability to grow most virtues in good soil, and we?ve reduced virtue to just being nice. Where did we go wrong, and how can we forge a common morality in a diverse society?"

"In real life, however, you don't react to what someone did; you react only to what you think she did, and the gap between action and perception is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is but what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator?"

"Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second."

"It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called 'openness to experience.' People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable."

"Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world."

"It's a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away."

"Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree."

"Liberals tend to be much more concerned about business and corporations as the oppressors. They look to government as the solution. On the Right it's the opposite. They see business as good, as what generates wealth in society, and they see government as the oppressor, which makes it hard for especially small businesspeople."

"Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right."

"Many species have a social life, but among mammals, only humans (and naked mole rats) are ultra-social ? able to live in very large cooperative groups. The golden rule, supplemented with gossip, is the secret of our success. Understanding the deep workings of reciprocity can help you to solve problems in your own social life, and guard against the many ways people try to manipulate you."

"Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to consider the possibility that there might really be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society."

"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."

"Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say."

"Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood."

"Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams... but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality."

"Morality is difficult. It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups."

"Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible."

"Most of the people going to Congress are good, hard-working, intelligent people who really want to solve problems. But once they get there, they find that they are forced to play a game that rewards hyper-partisanship and that punishes independent thinking."

"Most of our social nature is like that of other primates - we're mostly out for ourselves."

"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?"

"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."