Jonathan Haidt Quotes

The idea is, we're still a society where we recognize and see and even sometimes seek members of our own tribe, whatever that tribe is. It could be ethnic, religious, geographic, political.

The defining mode of conflict in the era ahead is ethnic conflict.

In Ulster every man's creed is known and noted and ninety-nine men in a hundred vote according to their creed.

As a child growing up in San Francisco in the 1950s, I sometimes met insults when I ventured outside of Chinatown or my neighborhood. I have even been spat on and threatened with a knife. I could have let my anger fester until it became hate. However, I realized they were isolated incidents, and I simply got on with my life.

Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.

You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.

In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction.

People want to be with their own and want to be separated from others.

Nothing in the world causes more problems than concepts of ethnic virtue. It's irrelevant.

When people today say 'racism,' they mean it's a nationalism they don't like. Racialism used to be a good thing, a looking-out for what was best for one group... Israel comes out of that 19th-century idea of nationalism. Many Arab states also have preferences. It's fundamentally unfair to decide that one is racism and the others aren't.

I am not Alt-Right, but I am Jewish and have publicly denounced the Alt-Right.

What Donald Trump has done is to make it possible for people who had racist, sexist, and all kinds of prejudices and bigotry to put them right out there.

The horrifying thing is that nearly half of America seems in synch with xenophobia and race-baiting.

There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.

Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man's traditional mistrust of the man who is not part of his tribe, that 'other' who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, and who participates in mysterious rites and rituals.

When people unfortunately use religion to facilitate their envy, arrogance and hate, communalism surfaces.

Racism is ridiculous no matter where it's coming from.

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.

I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them... That's American politics, pure and simple.

In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.

It graduates to 'our state is better than your state', and 'our nation is better than your nation.' And it circles all the way around to where it started: 'Our God is better than your God.'

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.

Sometimes the British press is maybe a little bit racist.

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.

You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.