Martha Stout Quotes

Quotes about:

• I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.

  Martha Stout

  Sorry, Devil, Want

  Martha Stout, Ph.D. (2005). “The Sociopath Next Door”, p.109, Harmony

  52 Copy quote

• I think con man is the usual term. When somebody comes on television to tell a lot of needy people that God will send them to heaven if they send him $200, if that's not downright sociopathic, it's close.

  Martha Stout

  Men, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• Usually sociopaths will look down upon us for that very reason - that we're gullible. We're weak. One person told me that he thought he was the only honest person because he would admit that he didn't have a conscience and everybody else was clearly faking it.

  Martha Stout

  Honest, Gullible, Reason

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  10 Copy quote

• Most of who we are is our deepest emotions, and someone who cannot feel those emotions in a positive way is never going to understand much about his fellow human beings.

  Martha Stout

  Emotion

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

• A conscience is, for a while anyway, pretty easy to fake.

  Martha Stout

  Fake, Easy, Conscience

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Kindness, Winning, Brain

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Character, Leader, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Thinking, People, Imagine

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Sympathy, Fear, Compassion

  Martha Stout, Ph.D. (2005). “The Sociopath Next Door”, p.107, Harmony

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Behavior, Conscience

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Loyalty, People, Sociopath

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• Sociopaths are often extremely charming. They are people who are better than you and me at charming people, at being charismatic. I've heard this more often than I can count: "He was the most charming man I ever met," or, "She was the sexiest woman I ever met," or, "The most interesting person I ever met . . ."

  Martha Stout

  Men, People, Interesting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  11 Copy quote

• 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?

  Martha Stout

  Fun, Smart, Stupid

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her posocial sense, you are damaging it-and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.

  Martha Stout

  Daughter, Rocks, People

  20 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Smart, Emotion, Study

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• An intelligent sociopath can learn the rules about what's good and what's bad, what people see as good and bad. But they don't get that intervening sense of guilt, that pang of conscience, on account of it. So they tend to know what's wrong or right, they just don't care. That's another thing that they can use against us: that we do care. We're predictable in that.

  Martha Stout

  Intelligent, People, Guilt

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• In Western culture, particularly North America, a lot of rules are descriptors for sociopathy: a general acceptance of lying as long as you win, an attitude of "me first," an attitude that what it looks like is more important than what it is. This makes it much easier for a sociopath to be camouflaged in our culture.

  Martha Stout

  Attitude, Lying, Acceptance

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  12 Copy quote

• Being sociopath is not what most people would consider to be winning. Most of us have some kind of positive goal in mind when we think of winning. A sociopath thinks in terms of successfully manipulating someone into doing something that he or she would not have done otherwise. That can be a small thing or a tremendous thing, but the point for the sociopath is to win, to make sure that this person does what they're trying to coerce him or her into doing. It can be as disgusting and as simple as making a child cry. Or it can be as complex as making your wife feel bad about herself.

  Martha Stout

  Children, Thinking, Winning

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Stupid, Brilliant, Sociopath

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• The reason I want to explain that you're probably never going to get revenge a sociopath and you're also probably not going to redeem this person, is that it is not a project that will ever succeed. At present, if a person does not have a conscience, we know of no way to instill one - not even a little bit. It's not like something you can take off the shelf and put into somebody's brain. It makes me so sad to hear people say, "I think I can see just a little bit of a conscience."

  Martha Stout

  Revenge, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.

  Martha Stout

  Caring, Emotional, Intellectual

  Martha Stout, Ph.D. (2005). “The Sociopath Next Door”, p.126, Harmony

  8 Copy quote

• One way or another, a life without conscience is a failed life.

  Martha Stout

  Way, One Way, Conscience

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Martha Stout

  Pain, Acting, Demand

  Martha Stout, Ph.D. (2005). “The Sociopath Next Door”, p.68, Harmony

  9 Copy quote

• I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.

  Martha Stout

  Drinking, Hair, Perfect

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Fun, Drinking, Boredom

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

Page 1 of 3

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin