Martha Stout Quotes

#1. As for the boys ... vulnerable fathers turn to time-honored defensive responses to maintain the function that father knows best' Parents, especially fathers, teach their sons to obey authority no matter what.

Martha Stout

#2. 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

#3. Conscience- protects the privileges of intimacy, makes ,friends keep their promises, prevents the angered spouse from striking back.

Martha Stout

#4. We are all a little crazy.

Martha Stout

#5. Sociopaths cannot love, by definition they do not have higher values, and they almost never feel comfortable in their own skins. They are loveless, amoral, and chronically bored, even the few who become rich and powerful.

Martha Stout

#6. When confronted with a destructive outcome that is clearly their doing, they will say, plain and simple, "I never did that," and will to all appearances believe their own direct lie.

Martha Stout

#7. 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.

Martha Stout

#8. Controlling others - winning - is more compelling than anything (or anyone) else.

Martha Stout

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

Martha Stout

#10. We feel that if someone is bad, he should be burdened with the knowledge that he is bad. It seems to us the ultimate injustice that a person could be evil, by our assessment , and still feel fine about himself.

Martha Stout

#11. To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically the same as saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close. And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil.

Martha Stout

#12. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. 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. I first learned this when

Martha Stout

#13. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.

Martha Stout

#14. Asked about our sense that we are not safe in our own world, Albert Einstein once said, The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

Martha Stout

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

Martha Stout

#16. And so without our primordial attachments to others, what would we be?
Evidently, we would be the players of a game, one that resembled a giant chess match, with our fellow human beings as the rooks, the knights, and the pawns. For this is the essence of sociopathic behavior, and desire.

Martha Stout

#17. 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.

Martha Stout

#18. ...after twenty-five years of treating trauma survivors, I have learned that getting hit is actually one of the more bearable ways a person can be assaulted.

Martha Stout

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

Martha Stout

#20. 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

#21. 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