Martha Stout quotes

I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him. (Martha Stout)
Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task. View quote
Martha Stout
If you don't have a conscience, what is your behavior like? Apparently, if you don't have a conscience, if you don't really . . . love, then the only thing that's left for you is the game - it's about controlling things. View quote
Martha Stout
If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath. View quote
Martha Stout
Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him. View quote
Martha Stout
Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there's not much left except the will to win. View quote
Martha Stout
The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy. View quote
Martha Stout
The perfect victim, from the sociopath's point of view, is the person who is smart enough and capable enough to do him some good in the world and who is also fun to manipulate. How much fun is it to manipulate someone who is stupid and incompetent? View quote
Martha Stout
The central trait of sociopathy is a complete lack of conscience, which is very difficult for most people to get their heads around, because those of us who do have a conscience can't really imagine what it would be like if we didn't. Most people think that deep down everybody has a conscience, and it turns out that's just not true. View quote
Martha Stout
The sociopath wants the person to be easily enough fooled to stick with him. This can be accomplished by looking for someone who is very, very loyal. Most of us consider loyalty to be a very positive trait - and it is a positive trait. But it also blinds people to some of the traits of the person they're loyal to. View quote
Martha Stout
Sociopaths are not inhibited by the notion that it's wrong to be addicted, or wrong to buy illegal drugs. Also, drinking or taking drugs can be a lot of fun, and even if it's not, it can dull that painful boredom for a while. So can certain other things, like taking risks, and particularly if you take a risk-averse person and you can manipulate him or her into taking risks, that's really fun. (Martha Stout)
If courage is acting according to one's conscience despite pain or fear, then strength is the ability to keep conscience awake and in force despite the demands of authorities to do otherwise. View quote
Martha Stout
One way or another, a life without conscience is a failed life. View quote
Martha Stout
The bottom line for most people who are normal is their need for other people. Even the greedy ones have this need - as long as they're not sociopathic. They may be very misguided and unhappy and do bad things and so forth, but in general if you look down deep, you find that these people are mainly concerned with other people and what other people think of them. View quote
Martha Stout
Conscience is the still small voice that has been trying since the infancy of our species to tell us that we are evolutionarily, emotionally, and spiritually One, and that if we seek peace and happiness, we must behave that way. View quote
Martha Stout
If you see somebody really pulling for your sympathy while at the same time hurting you intermittently, you should start to wonder. If somebody plays to your pity and really tries to draw that out of you, that's not normal. View quote
Martha Stout
Some parts of the population are starting to realize that character is extremely important and that it cannot be measured by the things we like to measure it by: the tabloids and so forth. Character is crucially important to a leader, to be a moral leader, and we'd better make it primary on our list or we're going to keep getting more of the same. View quote
Martha Stout
When you were a child, where boredom could actually get to be painful. Sociopaths experience that kind of pain in boredom. And so to be alone, to have nobody to play the game with, can be painful. It's not exactly fear, it's a kind of pain. View quote
Martha Stout
People ask, "What could possibly cause a normal person to torture her own child?" Well, the answer is: Nothing could cause a normal person to torture their own child. The reason that we see that happening is that there are people who don't care, who don't love - even their own children. View quote
Martha Stout
Sociopaths are just like everybody else in that some of them are really brilliant, some of them are really stupid, and most of them are somewhere in between. View quote
Martha Stout
The ultimate manipulation is to kill someone, and sociopathy is murderous in a psychological sense - there's a kind of soul-murder going on. (Martha Stout)
To learn to be charming is fairly easy - you can teach somebody to be charming and to learn human emotions - or to learn the behaviors that go with human emotions. A sociopath, a smart one, will study the way we emote, and will learn how to do that quite effectively. View quote
Martha Stout
Sociopaths are not afraid of very much, except for physical harm and dying - really primitive, basic kinds of fears. The problem with being alone for a sociopath is boredom. View quote
Martha Stout
Another thing that's fun for sociopath is speed, literal speed, going very fast in your car. Not that everybody who goes fast in their car is a sociopath, by any means, but anything that gives you a rush will lessen your sense of boredom. View quote
Martha Stout
Even famous people - are most concerned of all with what people who are close to them think. And the sociopath is generally not concerned with that at all. View quote
Martha Stout