Quotes & Sayings About Psychopaths

One of the problems with religion is that it creates in-group loyalty and out-group hostility, even when members of one's own group are behaving like psychopaths. — Sam Harris

Language and words for psychopaths are only word deep; there is no emotional colouring behind it. A psychopath can use a word like, 'I love you' but it means nothing more to him than if he said, 'I'll have a cup of coffee.' — Robert D. Hare

There are fundamentalist psychopaths in every religion in the world. Every single one. — Sophia Bush

While I don't think sociopaths have any sort of moral urge to do good things, I think they can and do act morally in the context of pursuing their own advantage. A good analogy would be a corporation. There are a lot of corporations that do things that you like, maybe even good things, like produce vaccines or electric cars, although the primary motivation is to make a profit. But just because you are trying to make a profit doesn't mean you can't do it by doing things you like, or that you are good at, or that comport with the way you see the world, or want the world to see you. — M.E. Thomas

Begbie doesnae even notice; he's in his element, particularly good at funerals in the way a lot ay psychopaths tend tae be. Ah suppose if bringing death and despair is yir life's work, then being somewhere like this must feel like a result; the job's already done and you can just kick back and relax. — Irvine Welsh

Dr. Robert Hare (author of Without Conscience: The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among Us) — Mick Strawser

Most psychopaths are not violent (although most serial murderers and serial rapists are psychopaths). They are people, mostly men, who have no moral emotions, no attachment systems, and no concerns for others.5 Because they feel no shame, embarrassment, or guilt, they find it easy to manipulate people into giving them money, sex, and trust. — Jonathan Haidt

Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them. — Gordon Ramsay

As Graeme Wood, a scholar on the teachings and ideology of ISIS, wrote in the Atlantic, The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. . . . The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. — Glenn Beck

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens-second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths. — Reynolds Price

He bends over to untie his shoes. "So, have you been ostracized from your little crowd of devotees?"
"No," I say automatically. Then I add, "Maybe. But they aren't my devotees."
"Please. They're like the Cult of Four."
I can't help but laugh. "Jealous? Wish you had a Cult of Psychopaths to call your very own? — Veronica Roth

Whereas most people automatically anticipate the consequences of their actions, automatically feel shame for unkind deeds, automatically understand why they should persist in the face of frustration, automatically distrust propositions that seem too good to be true, and are automatically aware of their commitments to others, psychopaths may only become aware of such factors with effort. — James Blair

I wouldn't be in shallow relationships, so I do nothing. I have no sex and no romance. Who needs it.? Who needs all these potential problems like disease and pregnancy.? I have no problems. No fear of disease, psychopaths, or stalkers. Why not just be with your friends and have real conversations and a good time.? — Candace Bushnell

Some werewolves are hairy on the inside. — Stephen King

There are some people who always feel happy. They're called psychopaths — Tal Ben-Shahar

Daesh is attacking us. Their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wants to destroy the Saudi state. These people are criminals. They're psychopaths. — Adel Al-Jubeir

War kills people; war kills animals; war kills plants; war kills buildings; war kills even shadows, because it annihilates the owner of the shadow! War is the psychopathy of the psychopaths! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I'm just an innocent racist who likes to flirt with young adult women And I meet emotionally retarded misfits who are kinky about infants' feet, scheming psychopaths, suicidal emos, brain dead skinheads and mestizos posing as white supremacists. — Greg Deane

Fact: Seventy-seven percent of psychopaths in the United States are incarcerated. — Kent A. Kiehl

according to a brief perusal of women writer's comments online over the past few days, men are: overly confident, predatory, helpless, psychopaths, terrified of women, fascists, the reason why the world is in this mess, literally so stupid, and the problem here. Of course what these women really mean is that they themselves are not overly confident, not predatory, not helpless, and on down the line. It's just easier to say that men are these things, than that you are not these things. People would rightly become suspicious if you suddenly started going on about how amazing you were. They'd start looking for proof you weren't. But by attributing these negative behaviors and traits to your "opposite" group, it's an easy, criticism-proof way of saying, "I would never behave like this, I would never be like this." And — Jessa Crispin

There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers. — Richard Castle

You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. — Anthony Bourdain

Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong - which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed; they just fail to act on that knowledge. — Jeffrey Kluger

It's a pretty big shock to realise that the only people you can identify with are psychopathic killers. — Dan Wells

This was truly to be a radical milestone: the world's first-ever marathon nude psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. Elliott's raw, naked, LSD-fueled sessions lasted for epic eleven day stretches. The psychopaths spent every waking moment journeying to their darkest corners in an attempt to get better. There were no distractions - no television, no clothes, no clocks, no calendars, only a perpetual discussion (at least one hundred hours every week) of their feelings. When they got hungry, they sucked food through straws that protruded through the walls. As during Paul Bindrim's own nude psychotherapy sessions, the patients were encouraged to go to their rawest emotional places by screaming and clawing at the walls and confessing fantasies of forbidden sexual longing for one another ... — Jon Ronson

The Islamic State's ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life's hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: No question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else. — Graeme Wood

You have psychopaths and sociopaths in charge. — Gerald Celente

Same. I don't like to think I might have ended up in Plumber's gang, but given the alternative..."
I raised both eyebrows. "Yeah. Drug-dealers or super-powered psychopaths? Choices, choices. — Violet Cross

Serial killers ruin families,' shrugged Bob. 'Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies. — Jon Ronson

In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths, estimated fortunately to make up only 1 to 4 percent of the population. The products of the opposing two vectors in natural selection are hardwired in our emotions and reasoning, and cannot be erased. Internal conflict is not a personal irregularity but a timeless human quality. No such conflict exists or can exist in an eagle, fox, or spider, for example, whose traits were born solely of individual selection, or a worker ant, whose social traits were shaped entirely by group selection. — Edward O. Wilson

Fact: There are over 29,000,000 psychopaths worldwide. — Kent A. Kiehl

Psychopaths are rats in the lab, Psychopaths don't have conscious... What next???

- (Dexter Series season 8 episode 3...) — Deyth Banger

You sick bastard," she said.
"Yes, I guess you could call me that." Terry replied. — Jonas Eriksson

Statism is an unnatural disaster. — Stefan Molyneux

If I have a mission in life, it is to convince people that everyone is morally motivated - everyone except for psychopaths. — Jonathan Haidt

Measurement and categorization are, of course, fundamental to any scientific endeavor, but the implications of being able to identify psychopaths are as much practical as academic. To put it simply, if we can't spot them, we are doomed to be their victims, both as individuals and as a society. — Robert D. Hare

Self-Professed Black Magicians seem universally unable to fight, fuck, or even buy their way out of wet paper bags, despite phantasizing constantly about becoming powerful psychopaths. — Peter J. Carroll

Psychos are in uniform circulation in society. — Pawan Mishra

He's really sort of the devil. He's completely emotionally detached. He has no empathy. You find that in psychopaths. It's about power with Voldemort. It's an aphrodisiac for him. Power makes him feel alive. — Ralph Fiennes

He did another experiment, the Startle Reflex Test, in which psychopaths and non-psychopaths were invited to look at grotesque images, like crime-scene photographs of blown-apart faces, and then when they least expected it, Bob would let off an incredibly loud noise in their ear. The non-psychopaths would leap with astonishment. The psychopaths would remain comparatively serene. Bob — Jon Ronson

When it comes to psychopaths, there is no medication. There is no treatment. There is no cure. There are only prisons. - JENI GREGORY, PHD, LICSW, CCM, CCTP — Robert Dugoni

At least she had a clear picture of what the Lying Game was now: Girl Scouts for psychopaths. — Sara Shepard

I feel I could kill. I feel that I might like it. And I know that this should scare me. But it doesn't. It excites me. I am in Plato's cave, watching the shadows and fraught with the desire to hunt what casts them. — Nenia Campbell

Here are a few of the sources I used, and I heartily recommend them: Simon Baron-Cohen, The Science of Evil; Judith Beck, Cognitive Behavior Therapy; Louis Cozolino, The Making of a Therapist; Kevin Dutton, The Wisdom of Psychopaths; James Fallon, The Psychopath Inside; Peter and Ginger Ross Breggin, Talking Back to Prozac; Robert D. — Lisa Scottoline

Never be fooled that things are going well when the government seemingly gives out "goody bags" to the public. Those "goodies" are full of poison. They cannot simultaneously pass laws protecting one and then blast others through the media and have us think they are doing us a favor. Their lying psychopaths with an agenda. They may serve corporate masters but their still to blame and as long as the public goes along with them, they are also culpable. Only you can free yourself through freeing your mind. — Dara Reidyr

Human beings are disgustingly predictable, and this is as true of psychopaths as it is of grandmothers. — Douglas Preston

The Germans are not a race of psychopaths, Alma. They're normal people like you and me, but with fanaticism, power, and impunity, anyone can turn into a monster, like the SS at Auschwitz, he told his sister. — Isabel Allende

Have you not heard? Dark elves are psychopaths. — Anglia Spring

I have heard that we are spirits having a human experience. Perhaps those of us who have no conscience are dark spirits having a human experience. — P.A. Speers

In short, ISIS is composed of religiously motivated psychopaths, — Jay Sekulow

He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart. — Thomas Harris

I remembered reading that the sweat and breath of certifiable psychopaths have a subtle but distinctive chemical odor because of certain physiological conditions accompanying that mental disorder. Maybe her breath smelled of craziness. — Dean Koontz

To be sure, if psychopaths do recognize that actions that are harmful are proscribed, this raises a question about why psychopaths and control criminals provide different explanations for why it is wrong to hit or pull someone's hair. Psychopaths offered conventional-type justifications (e.g., "it's not the done thing" [the subjects were British]), whereas the nonpsychopathic criminals offered justifications based on the victim's welfare. — Shaun Nichols

Morality is often seen as an innovation, like agriculture and writing. From this perspective, babies are pint-sized psychopaths, self-interested beings who need to be taught moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person. — Paul Bloom

I have no doubt there are magician psychopaths, and magician serial killers. I doubt Brakebills admissions is very good at screening for those. — Lev Grossman

Sex murders were usually the work of psychopaths and with that psychology was an innate ability to lie, to act, to feign surprise and horror when it was needed. Psychopaths were great liars. — Michael Connelly

The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us. — Kevin Barrett

When it comes to your self-esteem, it is best not to value the opinions of deluded psychopaths. — Rosen Trevithick

It's the doom of our species that psychopaths always want to be in charge. — Linda Nagata

Psychopaths play on the fact that most of us are trusting and forgiving people. The warning signs are always there; it's just difficult to see them because once we trust someone, the friendship becomes a blinder. - The Psychopath Next Door. — Mercy Cortez

Half of what creates psychopaths is genetic, but the other half is conditioning. — James Norton

Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others.'
Like you?'
On the other hand,' Zedka continued, pretending not to have heard the remark, 'you have Einstein, saying that there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Everest. Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time. Those people
and thousands of others
all lived in their own world. — Paulo Coelho

I told a journalist that Dave seemed quite psychopathic (I didn't know a thing about psychopaths but I assumed that that was the sort of thing they might do). — Jon Ronson

There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book takes the reader into a new world of experience; it is an experiment. A bad book, unless the writing is inept, reinforces the intransigent attitude of the reader not to experiment with a new world. Since there are criminals and psychopaths and sociopaths in all my novels they are in a way psychological thrillers. — John Franklin Bardin

I vaguely remembered hearing psychologists say there was a preponderance of psychopaths at the top - in the corporate and political worlds - a clinical absence of empathy being a benefit in those environments. — Jon Ronson

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. — Caroline Kepnes

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil. — Elie Wiesel

The killer's name was Michael Stone and he was a known psychopath. He had previous convictions. But the law stated that only patients whose mental disorders were considered treatable could be detained beyond their prison sentences. Psychopaths were considered untreatable and so Michael Stone had to be free. — Jon Ronson

Because like all psychopaths he was grandiose, and convinced of his own personal magnetism, assumed worship on the part of others. — Jonathan Kellerman

There's the unusual stuff that psychopaths do - impulsive antisocial behavior, beginning in childhood - and there are the moral emotions that psychopaths lack. They feel no compassion, guilt, shame, or even embarrassment, which makes it easy for them to lie, and to hurt family, friends, and animals. — Jonathan Haidt

less-intelligent psychopaths get caught and sent to prison while more-intelligent psychopaths tend to move into corporate or political occupations, — Dean A. Haycock

This isn't about convincing you whether or not there is a God. I believe God and the Universe exists. If you don't believe there is a greater force, then surely you believe that something inside of us and is in the driver's seat. In other words, something is driving us towards figuring out how to master happiness, peace, love, and understanding psychopaths, murderers and Taylor Swift fans. — Sadiqua Hamdan

Psychopaths have a grandiose self-structure which demands a scornful and detached devaluation of others, in order to ward off their envy toward the good perceived in other people. He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence. He will delight you with his wit and his plans. He will show you a good time but you will always get the bill. He will smile and deceive you, and he will scare you with his eyes. And when he is through with you, and he will be through with you, he will desert you and take with him your innocence and your pride. — Robert D. Hare

Too many people hold the idea that psychopaths are essentially killers or convicts. The general public hasn't been educated to see beyond the social stereotypes to understand that psychopaths can be entrepreneurs, politicians, CEOs and other successful individuals who may never see the inside of a prison. — Robert D. Hare

The world dotes on its lunatics, whether saintly or sadistic, and commemorates their careers. Psychopaths make terrific material for news agencies and movie studios; their exploits always draw a crowd. But the moment a discouraging word is spoken, some depressing knowledge, that crowd either disperses or goes on the attack. It is depression not madness that cows us, demoralization not insanity that we dread, disillusionment of the mind not its derangement that imperils our culture of hope. — Thomas Ligotti

Another difference between psychopaths and other inmates is that psychopaths don't get distressed by being in prison. Most inmates get depressed when they get inside, and they find prison to be a stressful experience. A hallmark feature of psychopaths' disorder is that they don't get bothered by much of anything. They don't ruminate and they don't get depressed. — Kent A. Kiehl

In a world of differing opinions, mentally unstable people and complete psychopaths, it was the type of simplistic notion that some people wouldn't want to follow or ignorance would just simply not allow them to understand. — S.A. Tawks

Psychopaths ... people who know the differences between right and wrong, but don't give a shit. That's what most of my characters are like. — Elmore Leonard

Psychopaths can assume the burden of mental accounting without any obvious distress. That is no accident: They are psychopaths. They do not care about others and are quite happy to sever relationships whenever the need arises. Some people are monsters of egocentricity. But lying unquestionably comes at a psychological cost for the rest of us. — Sam Harris

We are being offered a psychopathic and psychotic moral attitude ... it is psychopathic because this is a total detachment from the, from the well-being of human beings. It, this so easily rationalizes the slaughter of children. Ok, just think about the Muslims at this moment who are blowing themselves up, convinced that they are agents of God's will. There is absolutely nothing that Dr. Craig can s - can say against their behavior, in moral terms, apart from his own faith-based claim that they're praying to the wrong God. If they had the right God, what they were doing would be good, on Divine Command theory.
Now, I'm obviously not saying that all that Dr. Craig, or all religious people, are psychopaths and psychotics, but this to me is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own. — Sam Harris

Theta waves are associated with drowsy, meditative, or sleeping states. Yet in psychopaths, they occur during normal waking states, even sometimes during states of increased arousal. — Kevin Dutton

As institutional psychopaths, corporations are wont to remove obstacles that get into their way. — Joel Bakan

She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that. — Alexander McCall Smith

My main dream - and I'm trying to get 'Living TV' to do it - is to go into prison and interview serial killers, rapists, murderers, psychopaths. — Katie Price

Rose only hangs out with guys and psychopaths," said Mia.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "since I'm both a psychopath and a guy, that would explain why we're such good friends. — Richelle Mead

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men. — Michael Connelly

One nurse thought I was "brave." I think she was talking about my steely-eyed, grin-and-bear-it kind of attitude. There were no tears, no complaints from me - a total lack of affect. In a victim, it is courage and thus admirable; in a predator, it is a lack of humanity and instills fear. — M.E. Thomas

It is easy to romanticise, say, tigers or lions and cats. We admire their magnificent beauty, strength and agility. But we would regard their notional human counterparts as wanton psychopaths of the worst kind. — David Pearce

I know you're busy dating actresses and psychopaths. — Christopher Moore

If I think she' hot and it turns out she's a psychopath, then what does that say about me? I'm totally not ready for that kind of therapy. — Barry Lyga

Fact: A psychopath is born every 47 seconds. — Kent A. Kiehl

We find people of value,' she said, speaking like a teacher addressing a small child, 'and we determine what story they need to hear. It's the story that they're already telling themselves, don't you see? It's the nightmare they believe in. Once you understand that nightmare, you join them in it. Their fear becomes your fear. It's all a shared experience then. And once you have that, once they feel that is the truth, all the way down to their core, then your coping strategy becomes theirs. It's a natural progression. This is the power of a shared narrative. Of the echo chamber. — Michael Koryta

Even psychopaths have emotions. Then again, maybe not. — Richard Ramirez

At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one. — Jon Ronson

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas. — Nick Cave

Let's be clear: all professions look bad in the movies. And there's a good reason for this. Movies don't portray career paths, they conscript interesting lifestyles to serve a plot. So lawyers are all unscrupulous and doctors are all uncaring. Psychiatrists are all crazy, and politicians are all corrupt. All cops are psychopaths, and all businessmen are crooks. Even moviemakers come off badly: directors are megalomaniacs, actors are spoiled brats. Since all occupations are portrayed negatively, why expect scientists to be treated differently? — Michael Crichton

See, she's proving to be an asset already," Lucifer exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. "I knew I was making the right choice pairing you up." "You're both insane," he muttered. "Thank you," they replied in chorus. And despite himself, Xaphan's lips almost twitched a smile in response. He clamped his mouth tight. I don't smile. Even for cute psychopaths. — Eve Langlais

If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will.--Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath — P.A. Speers

Son, this is the United States of America. Some would say it's unconstitutional to try to prevent psychopaths from fulfilling their potential. — Dean Koontz

Once we ask why it should be that all human beings - including infants, the intellectually disabled, criminal psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, and the rest - have some kind of dignity or worth that no elephant, pig, or chimpanzee can ever achieve, we see that this question is as difficult to answer as our original request for some relevant fact that justifies the inequality of humans and other animals. — Peter Singer