Sociopathy Quotes

“When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.”
― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

“I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

“Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development , compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.”
― Simon Baron-Cohen, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty

“I'm an 'intelligent' sociopath. I don't have problems with drugs, I don't commit crimes, I don't take pleasure in hurting people, and I don't typically have relationship problems. I do have a complete lack of empathy. But I consider that an advantage, most of the time. Do I know the difference between right and wrong, and do I want to be good? Sure. ... A peaceful and orderly world is a more comfortable world for me to live in. So do I avoid breaking the law because it's 'right'? No, I avoid breaking the law because it makes sense.”
― M. E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

“Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay...cats were all about using people”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“We do not have to be mental health professionals to identify the traits of the possible sociopaths among us.”
― P.A. Speers, Type 1 Sociopath - When Difficult People Are More Than Just Difficult People

“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, The Sociopath Next Door

“Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“The toxic behaviors were there before you decided to enter into relationships with them. The signs were there. You may have chosen to look the other way, but the signs were there.—”
― P.A. Speers, Type 1 Sociopath - When Difficult People Are More Than Just Difficult People

“I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone recieved the news with pleasure. Several said, "Thank God that son of a bitch is dead."

Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise...

There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, "What can we do now?" How can we go on without him?"

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, mo matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror....we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

“He had never regarded other men as anything but puppets of a sort, created to fill up an empty world. He divided them into two classes: those he greeted because some chance had put him in contact with them, and those he did not greet. But both these categories of individuals were equally insignificant in his eyes.

("An Old Man")”
― Guy de Maupassant

“A sociopath, on the other hand, has the same regard for financial obligations as he does to personal ones: no remorse, no conscience. Get what you want now, and damn the consequences later.”
― Mary Jo Buttafuoco, Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know

“That is to say: Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgement sagacious and sound. These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous but occasional, evoked by some special object; it is probably secretive, which is as much to say it is self-contained, so that when moreover, most active, it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity, and for the reason above suggested that whatever its aims may be--and the aim is never declared--the method and the outward proceeding are always perfectly rational.”
― Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

“My most salient worry would not be how [my future children] would treat the world, but how the world would treat them. Would they be outsiders or outcasts? I would hate for them to feel compelled to go underground, never to find acceptance for who they are, to be regarded as hollow, unfinished people—or even the embodiment of evil.”
― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

“The more I paid attention, the more I noticed just how often 'apathy,' 'lack of feeling,' and the word 'sociopath' were associated with evil. Everywhere. From celebrated books like East of Eden and The Sociopath Next Door to award-winning films like The Silence of The Lambs and American Psycho, the 'sociopath' character composite was almost exclusively reserved for the 'bad' guys (and girls). These one-dimensional portrayals weren't limited to fiction, either. Anytime there was a sensational crime that captured national attention, or a politician who displayed callous indifference for their constituents, even respected journalists would to jump to invoke a diagnosis of 'sociopathy.' This despite having no training or qualifications to do so.”
― Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir

“Some people are really out here trying to win at everything. I just want to live authentically through tenderness. Imagine seeing life as a performance you have to win at; rather than an authentic daily experience. Imagine thinking that it's either victory or shame, either or. I just can't fathom it.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Wace's charm and ease of manner, his smile, his warmth, had vanished. Once before, Strike had faced a killer whose eyes, under the stress and excitement of hearing his crimes described, had become as black and blank as those of a shark, and now he saw the phenomenon again: Wace's eyes might have turned into empty boreholes.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Running Grave

“Everyone watches television and decides they'll roleplay their favorite sociopath or their favorite mental invalid. Many of the people around today aspire to be deranged or something, it's embarrassing. It's like they want an escape from the mundane so badly that they'd induce (or act out) mental instability to get there.”
― Mike Ma, Harassment Architecture

“You're an odd creature.' he said, staring at her. 'I don't believe you ever feel anything, do you? Are you fond of your mother? Do you like me? Do you care about anyone?'
[...]'I don't know,' she said carelessly. 'I like doing things.'
'You won't always be like that,' he insisted. 'Some day you'll feel something, surely?”
― Daphne du Maurier, Julius

“It often seems to me that these people who
commit such heinous crimes—sociopath or empath—are not so much more damaged than
everyone else, but that they seem to have less to lose.”
― M.E. Thomas

“Isaac was a sociopath, and all sociopaths, be they Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, or Jenna's own mother, shared certain traits. One of those traits: they always played by their own rules, rules that set double standards—one standard for only them, and another standard for everyone else.”
― Colby Marshall, Color Blind

“Sociopaths are often described as being unfeeling towards others, selfishly pursuing their own needs and using aggression to get what they want. Despite a vague sense that sociopathy denotes serious antisocial behaviour, no separate, well-validated assessment instrument for sociopathy exists.”
― Essi Viding, Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction

“In sharing his vision of the ‘black light’ – significantly, Brady wanted the phrase to be the title of his autobiography – he was again calling attention to the genesis of his sociopathy.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine

“From the Trial of Dr Pritchard: The Doctor was not always in so grave a mood. Breaking the sad news (of his wife's death) next day to a lady friend, he said he had called in no less than three doctors to attend on his wife, and yet she died; "a case," he pleasantly commented, "of two many cooks.”
― William Roughhead

“She leaned back in her chair and raised her face to the sun, mildly intoxicated, not so much by the wine as by the scope of this important argument. Seduced, also, by the possibility that she might please herself, simply by wishing it so. As a devil's advocate, he was flawless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“You are sadistic,' she said, pleasantly.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“I hate you,' she shouted, hopefully.
A steady crunch of gravel announced the reappearance of Mr Neville. When his face came into focus, Edith saw that it was wearing its usual smile, intensified.
'You are coming along very well,' he said, taking her arm.
'You know,' she said, after ten minutes of silent descent. 'I find that smile of yours just the faintest bit unamiable.'
His smile broadened. 'When you get to know me better,' he remarked, 'you will realize just how unamiable it really is.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“Regardless of whether they realized it, my parents, my friends, my teachers, my lovers—everyone, on some level—was uncomfortable with my limited emotion. Because it meant something sinister. Because, along with the rest of the world, they had been programmed to believe that sociopaths were atrocious. A worst-case scenario for parents.”
― Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir