Quotes from Gavin de Becker

The institutions of psychiatry, law enforcement, and government have proved that no matter what your resources, you cannot reliably control the conduct of crazy people.

Idolizing heroes and falling for their seductive appeal is normal in America, but what is a mild drug to most is a poison for some people.

there is no mystery of human behavior that cannot be solved inside your head or your heart.

through their families—and those families are important models for the rest of us

All that can accurately be said about a man who thinks he is a poached egg is that he is in the minority.

One of the doctors who reviewed how people had performed in that operating room could have been speaking about denial in general when he astutely said: "It's like waking up in your house with a room full of smoke, opening the window to let the smoke out, and then going back to bed.

And why do we worship hindsight (as in the news media's constant rehash of the day, the week, the year) and yet distrust foresight, which actually might make a difference in our lives?

I realize this now, but I didn't know it then." Of course, if it is in their heads now, so was it then. What they mean is that they only now accept the significance

The bottom line is that there is really only one good reason to get a restraining order in a case of wife abuse: the woman believes the man will honor it and leave her alone.

Safety is the preeminent concern of all creatures and it clearly justifies a seemingly abrupt and rejecting response from time to time. Anyway, rudeness is relative.

Does he do all this with evil design? No, it is part of his concept of how to retain love.

I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life." —Maya Angelou

In my work I don't have that luxury. The stakes of some predictions require that I intimately recognize and accept what I observe in others no matter who they are, no matter what they have done, no matter what they might do, no matter where it takes me in myself. There may be a time in your life when you too won't have the luxury of saying you don't recognize someone's sinister intent. Your survival may depend on your recognizing it.

In an extraordinary correspondence, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud explored the topic of human violence. Einstein's letter concluded that "man has in him the need to hate and destroy.

I have seen these pieces so often that I may recognize them sooner than some people, but my main job is just to get them on the table.

The person who recognizes the strategy of Too Many Details sees the forest while simultaneously being able to see the few trees that really matter.

learned that the time after a major incident offered a period of safety and the best rest

The person who recognizes the strategy of Too Many Details sees the forest while simultaneously being able to see the few trees that really matter. When approached by a stranger while walking on some city street at night, no matter how engaging he might be, you must never lose sight of the context: He is a stranger who approached you. A good exercise is to occasionally remind yourself of where you are and what your relationship is to the people around you.

Curiosity is, after all, the way we answer when intuition whispers, "There's something there.

Forced teaming is an effective way to establish premature trust because a we're-in-the-same-boat attitude is hard to rebuff without feeling rude.

As we stand on the tracks, we can avoid the oncoming train only if we are willing to see it and willing to predict that it won't stop. But instead of improving the technologies of prediction, America improves the technologies of conflict:

David Mamet's film House of Games is a wonderful exploration of cons and con artists that shows forced teaming at work.

Those people we are willing to suspect are inherently less dangerous than those we refuse to suspect. We

Paul Eckman says, "The face tells us subtleties in feelings that only a poet can put into words.