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Quote by Jonathan Haidt

“I think the greatest work in social psychology from the 1950s and '60s is enormously important. I wish every high school kid could take a course in social psychology. I think we're making enormous strides in understanding the brain. These aren't yet giving us great insights, but I feel like we're on the verge of it. In five or ten years this basically searching the brain is really going to change things.”

Author

Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is an American psychologist known for his research in moral psychology and social psychology. His work focuses on moral judgment, political ideology, and religious beliefs. Haidt's book, 'The Righteous Mind,' explores the evolution of morality and ideology and how they shape human behavior and social structures. more

“I think it's dangerous to think you know what you're writing. I usually don't know, and usually I just discover it in the course of writing. I envy those writers who can outline a beginning, a middle, and end. Fitzgerald supposedly did it. John Irving does. Bret Easton Ellis does. But for me, the writing itself is the process of discovery. I can't see all that far ahead.”

Thinking Writing Dangerous Envy

Author:Jay McInerney

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”

Made History Kings Historical Civil Rights Makers Influential

Book:A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings

Source: A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings

“We scientists have way too much a tendency to simplify problems. I guess it actually comes to us naturally. Take the simplest unit, separate out all the confusing, external factors. Study it. Make sure you understand it. And in psychology that means the person studying the individual. But if you want to study our social nature, if you want to study processes that will lead to war and peace, you don't learn all that much by looking at the single individual. A lot of the important things are emergent facts about us, things that you can only see when you get a lot of us interacting.”

Mean Important War Problem Individual Study Psychology Scientist Confusing Simplify

Author:Jonathan Haidt

“I think of myself as a social scientist. In order to get hired and to get promoted, we're forced to declare a disciplinary and sub-disciplinary specialty, so I am a psychologist and I am a social psychologist within that. But I think the exciting thing is to think about the social sciences in general and the nature of society. It's one of the hardest things to think about, because our brains aren't designed to think about these emergent entities. We're not good at it.”

Thinking Brain Scientist Exciting Psychologist Social Science