Sociopaths are not usually physically violent. A typical sociopath never kills anybody and doesn't look like Charles Manson - they look like you and me and everybody else. You're not looking for someone who's recognizably evil or scary-looking, but rather someone who looks normal. Another lynchpin is dishonesty. Lying for the sake of lying. Lying just to see whether you can trick people. And sometimes telling larger lies to get larger effects.

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.

Most of who we are is our deepest emotions, and someone who cannot feel those emotions in a positive way is never going to understand much about his fellow human beings.

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.

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.

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

I think con man is the usual term. When somebody comes on television to tell a lot of needy people that God will send them to heaven if they send him $200, if that's not downright sociopathic, it's close.