Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide
Jonathan HaidtThe initial organization of the brain does not depend that much on experience. Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises.
Jonathan HaidtMorality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.
Jonathan HaidtWe can call this "the progress principle": Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: "Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing."
Jonathan Haidt