Jonathan Haidt

"Gossip and reputation make sure that what comes around - a person who is cruel will find that the others are cruel back 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. As long as everyone plays tit-for-tat augmented by gratitude, vengeance, and gossip, the whole system should work beautifully."

"Nowadays, secular people often see the Enlightenment as a battle between two mortal enemies; on one side was science, with its principal weapon, reason, and on the other side was religion, with its ancient shield of superstition. Reason defeated superstition, light replaced darkness."

"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."

"Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason."

"First, kill all the math classes beyond algebra. Stop wasting so much of our students’ time learning math. It’s not useful, it’s not helpful."

"Sports is to war as pornography is to sex."

"The lesson Buddha and Marcus Aurelius had taught centuries earlier: "Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it"."

"Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will guide you to the study thats right for you."

"Egalitarianism seems to be rooted more in the hatred of domination than in the love of equality per se."

"Religions are moral s. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that […] influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass […] That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for —Durkheims word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order. (It means, literally, "normlessness.") We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We dont really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few)."

"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."