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.

Conscience is a creator of meaning. As a sense of constraint rooted in our emotional ties to one another, it prevents life from devolving into nothing but a long and essentially boring game of attempted dominance over our fellow human beings, and for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes.

Someone, or some group in George W. Bush administration, took 300 million people to war against their will, based on a very giant lie. Combined with the notion of winning, that is, to me, a horrendously scary situation.

A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her posocial sense, you are damaging it-and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.

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.

Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.

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.