Quotes from Kevin Dutton

What if our better nature wasn't better after all? But was instead, well, just nature?

Psychopathy is like sunlight. Overexposure can hasten one's demise in grotesque, carcinogenic fashion. But regulated exposure at controlled and optimal levels can have a significant positive impact on well-being and quality of life.

The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It's much easier to convince yourself that you're reasonable and civilised, than soft and weak, isn't it?

Every society needs particular individuals to do its dirty work for it.

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good.

I think the problem is that people spend so much time worrying about what might happen, what might go wrong, that they completely lose sight of the present. They completely overlook the fact that, actually, right now, everything's fine. You can see that quite clearly in your interrogation exercise. What was it that chap told you? It's not the violence that breaks you. It's the threat of it. So why not just stay in the moment?

Psychopaths, rather than having an impairment in recognizing the emotions of others, indeed have a talent for it. And that the problem lies not in emotional recognition per se, but in the dissociation between its sensory and affective components: in the disconnect between knowing what an emotion is and feeling what it's like.

Psychopathy was positively associated with in-house ratings of charisma and presentation style: creativity, good strategic thinking, and excellent communication skills.

Ruthlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness (living in the moment), and action. Who wouldn't, at certain points in their lives, benefit from kicking one or two of them up a notch? What was important was being able to turn them back down.

With his immaculately coiffured blond locks and his impeccable cut-glass accent, he looks, and sounds, like a dab hand. 'People are as nice as you make them,' he enunciates. 'Which gives you a heck of a lot of power over them, of course.

if you believe you can, or believe you can't - either way you're right

The most prolific and accomplished hunters were not the most bloodthirsty and indefatigable. They were the most cool and empathetic. They were the ones who were able to assimilate their quarry's mind-set--to see through the eyes of their prey and thus reliably predict its deft, innate trajectories of evasion.

These eight independent satellite states of the psychopathic personality--Machiavellian Egocentricity, Impulsive Nonconformity, Blame Externalization, Carefree Nonplanfulness, Fearlessness, Social Potency, Stress Immunity, and Coldheartedness.

If you want to stop someone from remembering something, the key is to use distraction.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" —HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Traits that are common among psychopathic serial killers--a grandiose sense of self-worth, persuasiveness, superficial charm, ruthlessness, lack of remorse, and the manipulation of others--are also shared by politicians and world leaders.

Give rejection the finger, and rejection gives it back.

I've always maintained that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do so at the stock exchange," he enthused. "Without doubt, there's a greater proportion of psychopathic big hitters in the corporate world than there is in the general population. You'll find them in any organization where your position and status afford you power and control over others, and the chance of material gain.

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.

Psychopaths are shadowmancers', the agent tells me, a large-scale map of the US dotted with timelines, hotspots and murderous crimson trajectories plastered across the wall behind his desk. 'They survive by moving around. They don't have the same need for close relationships that normal people do. So they live in an orbit of perpetual drift, in which the chances of running into their victims again is minimised.

I think the problem is that people spend so much time worrying about what might happen, what might go wrong, that they completely lose sight of the present.

Pure unconditional aggression and pure unconditional capitulation are destined to fail as strategies of social exchange in a society of multiple interaction and mutual dependence.

The corporate environment, with its downsizing, restructuring, mergers, and acquisitions, has actually become even more of a hothouse for psychopaths.

Because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to alter their attention until they get what they're after.