Good Reasonable People Quotes

“our cognitive systems value self-protection, sometimes more than reason.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Disconnected from newspapers and mail, rural communities often lost touch with the broader culture and became insular.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“The concentration of Democrats in cities means that they tend to be underrepresented in the Senate and in the Electoral College, which give a lot of weight to rural states with low populations. And it makes Democrats especially vulnerable to gerrymandering.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“And six of the largest cities make up a quarter of the whole economy.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“In the United States, just twenty-three cities make up half of the nation’s economic output.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Places where trucks outnumbered cars voted more than 80 percent Republican, whereas those with more sedans than trucks voted overwhelmingly Democratic.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Voters living within ten miles of a Whole Foods, Lululemon, or an Apple Store voted Democratic by a 30-point margin in 2016. Those living close to a Cracker Barrel, Bass Pro Shop, or Hobby Lobby voted Republican by 10 percentage points. And those living too far out to be near any chain stores voted Republican by more than 20 points.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“When researchers statistically control for those racial attitudes, the diploma divide among White voters disappears. That is to say, if you selected a sample of voters who all believed that inequality is mainly about discrimination, they would vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, regardless of their education level. And if you selected a group who believed inequality is mainly about a lack of effort, they would vote overwhelmingly Republican—the PhDs and the high school dropouts alike.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Reading fiction was an exercise in empathy that helped me realize that no one is wrong or evil from their own point of view. So understanding people means understanding their point of view.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“For at least the last few hundred years, it is the fate of conservatives to always be losing, but not quite yet. And it is the fate of progressives to always be winning, but not fast enough. The result is that progressives are winning, but only conservatives can see it. So everyone is miserable.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“We are a divided country, but we are even more divided in our minds than in reality.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Real political change happens with political work.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“The lesson I learned in college was that when intuitions conflict with reason or evidence, intuition is mistaken. In fact, you can use reason and evidence to understand why your intuition felt right but was actually wrong.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. —James Baldwin”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“John F. Kennedy encapsulated this philosophy when he said, “If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean…someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“There are no grown-ups. Everyone is winging it. —Pamela Druckerman”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“cognitive response principle.” The principle says that no one changes their beliefs or attitudes based on information they receive. If they change, it is because of their own thoughts in response to the new information.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“The groups that really matter, Tajfel argued, are the ones that create and sustain our sense of identity as a good and valuable person.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Solomon Asch showed that an authority in a lab coat was not even necessary to coax people into going along. He found that if several peers said something that was plainly false, the majority of people would conform and recite an obvious lie.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. —William Faulkner”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Sometimes it is shocking how differently people make sense of the same world. It has become more and more apparent for many of us in recent years that other people we thought we knew don’t just disagree with us; they see the world in a deeply different way than we do.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“Decades of research have found that dehumanizing words and images are a strong predictor that political violence is around the corner. The Nazis famously depicted Jews as rats. In the Rwandan genocide, Hutus called Tutsis cockroaches. And Black Americans were depicted as apes in the Jim Crow South. Dehumanizing other people places them outside the circle of moral concern and makes violence much easier.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

“All these years later it’s not difficult for me to flip back to that mindset, if I want to. There’s a simplicity to it, as if the world switched from a Picasso to a Vermeer painting. There’s a certainty about right and wrong that comes from feeling you have God on your side. There’s a lightness that comes from being sure that the world is fair: if you work hard, you’ll be fine. I can’t stay there for long though. I’ve learned too much about history and science, and about the consequences of inequality and discrimination. Still, visiting that mindset from time to time helps humanize people who disagree with me.”
― Keith Payne, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide