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

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Martha Stout
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 12
Psychologist
Imagine
Appeal
Fear
Sympathy
Might
Appeals
People
Empathy
Sign
Perversely
Universal
Unscrupulous
Behavior
Reliable
Compassion
Directed

More quotes by Martha Stout

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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
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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.
Martha Stout
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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.
Martha Stout
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I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.
Martha Stout
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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
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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.
Martha Stout
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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.
Martha Stout
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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
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Controlling others—winning—is more compelling than anything (or anyone) else.
Martha Stout
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We are all a little crazy.
Martha Stout
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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
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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.
Martha Stout
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I am not allowed by my profession to diagnose somebody from a distance, but one can observe certain symptoms of sociopathy in George W. Bush.
Martha Stout
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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
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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
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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
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Someone, or some group in George W. Bush administration, took 300 million people to war against their will, based on a very giant lie. Combined with the notion of winning, that is, to me, a horrendously scary situation.
Martha Stout
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If you have reached the point where you're certain that person has no conscience, or is in it to win rather than to love you, then the very best thing you can do is to get away. That's a very hard lesson to learn, and, furthermore, it's not always possible.
Martha Stout
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We raise our children, especially girls, to ignore their spontaneious reactions-we teach them not to rock the societal boat...By the time she is thirty, the valient little girl's Ick!-her tendency to respond, to rock the boat, when someone's actions are really mean, may have been exciese from her behavior, and perhaps from her very mind.
Martha Stout
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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