In college, I was dead set on being a philosophy major, because I wanted to figure out the meaning of life. Four years later I realized philosophy had really nothing to say about the meaning of life, and psychology and literature are really where it's at.
Jonathan HaidtPeople who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything.
Jonathan HaidtAnd itโs not just that โwe all need somebody to lean onโ; recent work on giving support shows that caring for others is often more beneficial than is receiving help.โ .โ .โ .โ We need the give and the take, we need to belong. An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.
Jonathan HaidtTo understand most important ideas in psychology, you need to understand how the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together to do a job, but who often find themselves working at cross purposes.
Jonathan Haidt