Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door Quotes

“The best way to deal with a sociopath is to avoid him or her, to refuse any kind of contact or communication. The only completely effective way to protect yourself is to disallow him or her from your life altogether. Sociopaths live wholly outside of the social contract, and, violent or not, they are always destructive.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“He can pretend convincingly, but is never an actual friend to anyone and cannot feel even a small amount of genuine concern for his fellow human beings. He cannot love or feel authentic concern for his family members, though he may claim to have these feelings. He has no real interest in bonding with a mate; if he marries, the union will be loveless, one-sided, and almost certainly short-term. If his spouse has any value to him, it will be because he views her as a possession, one he may feel angry to lose, but never genuinely sad. Should he become a father, he will not be able to love even his children.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Sociopaths are masterful at using other people’s seemingly innocuous personal information against them.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“for our personal safety and, indeed, for the well-being of the planet we live on, we must abandon our mistaken beliefs—our “sociopathy blindness”—and take a useful stance grounded in knowledge and competence. We must learn that, despite their trademark lack of emotion, sociopaths are “emotion-eaters.” They have an intense desire to witness their control over us by inciting our confusion, anger, and fear. They feed off the negative emotions of others. Knowing when and how not to display emotion—how to remain calm in the presence of a sociopath rather than feeding him with our immediate feelings—is a vital skill. He is playing a terrible game with you, but I will show you how to change the rules of the game.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“sociopathic opponent is utterly stuck in his conviction that winning by dominating is all-important. He is helpless to change his objective. If you are able to change yours, you will have a powerful advantage.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“There is simply no known way to create a conscience in an individual who does not have one.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.” —JAMES THURBER”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Surprisingly, even twenty-first-century society relies rather heavily on the honor system, and when we encounter an individual who simply is not bound by honor, conscience, or connection, we may find ourselves in big trouble.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Seeing the pattern, understanding the true nature of sociopathy, and, most crucially, possessing effective methods to thwart the sociopath’s agenda will allow you to identify sociopathy confidently and respond with wise and powerful action when life absolutely requires you to take a stand.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Understanding sociopathy can teach us that, at those times when we focus only on ourselves and our group and ignore our intrinsic ties to others—when we turn a blind eye to the importance of everyone’s well-being—even those of us who do have conscience begin to lose our way, and the shadow of evil looms closer. Goodness lies in sensing our bonds with others; evil happens when, for whatever reasons, those feelings are numbed.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“in order to deal with someone who is devoid of conscience, you will need to approach him using your intellect rather than your emotions.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Cold-blooded violence and murder are not only the most complete form of domination; they are also the ultimate sociopathic manipulation of society. They make us all jump. In the aftermath of a mass killing, the worst possible reaction is the one we usually display: we broadcast, in all available media, the name of the killer, along with everything else about him that our able journalists can succeed in discovering. Out of our collective fear and prurient interest, the sociopathic murderer is fed a feast of attention like none other, along with detailed and even cinematic depictions of his astonishing power over ordinary human beings. From the homicidal sociopath’s point of view, this is a last meal very much worth risking the death penalty for, and a win to be hungrily envied—and perhaps emulated—by others whose names are not yet known.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“The harsh fact is that, at present, there is no cure for true conduct disorder, just as there is no cure for sociopathy. There is simply no known way to create a conscience in an individual who does not have one.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“For the foreseeable future, our individual lives are where we must take our stand, and where we will either start to rescue humanity or watch it begin to fade away.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“If we are to continue to survive in this contest, as our technology and global capabilities expand beyond our imaginations, we must let go of our superstitious ideas about evil and learn to recognize the currently invisible and endlessly destructive pattern that arises from the inability to love.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“antisocial ones—chronic lying, a lack of empathy, and a pattern of placing a power agenda ahead of the good of the people.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“The sociopath sees all laws and expectations as games to be played.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“in many situations where the narcissist would be clueless, unresponsive, and perhaps annoyed, the sociopath will be responsive, often charmingly so, creating a better disguise than the narcissist has.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“you are rewarding and encouraging him each and every time you allow him to see your anger, your confusion, or your hurt.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Serene silence about your intentions can be incredibly powerful when you are speaking with someone who is trying to control you.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“we know that repeated practice changes the brain,”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“GUIDELINE #9: TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH. Being targeted by a predator, even or especially a human one, evokes the fight-or-flight response in animals and in people. This essentially adaptive response is intended by nature to be short-lived—the animal either flees or makes a stand against the predator, both actions requiring all of the body’s systems on alert to ensure survival. But when the predation is carried out over a long period of time, as is often the case in sociopathy, the physiological components of the fight-or-flight response become protracted: blood pressure and heart rate increase and remain high; stored reserves of fats and sugars are continually converted and released into the bloodstream (to supply extra energy to fight or run); muscles all over the body are tense; digestion slows and stomach acidity increases; slow and relaxed diaphragmatic breathing changes to fast and shallow chest breathing; and, beginning in the hypothalamus, a persistent chain of hormonal reactions stimulates the adrenal cortex to release unhealthily large quantities of stress hormones such as cortisol. For a while the body will attempt to adapt, but if it continues to be stressed, it will eventually succumb to exhaustion, immune system depletion, and illness. In other words, being targeted by a sociopath can make you very sick in the long run.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Practice a poker face and the art of speaking very calmly. You have a significant advantage in this strategy also, because the sociopath’s brain processes emotional cues far less spontaneously than does the normal brain. The sociopath wants a large, unmistakable reaction. Do not give it to him.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“To defeat a sociopath, you must understand the nature of “human predators.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“They comprise the single largest subgroup of domestic abusers: people who attempt to enhance their sense of power and control by beating up on spouses, children, and the elderly in the privacy of their homes. This is one of the reasons we find them so difficult to identify.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“Ordinary people may simply be acting appropriately in their organizational role, just doing what is expected of them while participating in what a critical observer (usually well after the fact) would call evil. Under conditions of what we term moral inversion, ordinary people can engage in acts of administrative evil while believing that what they are doing is not only procedurally correct but, in fact, good.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

“A substantial proportion of people will 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.” Milgram believed that authority could put conscience to sleep because the obedient person makes an “adjustment of thought,” which is to see himself as not responsible for his own actions.”
― Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator