As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.
And he never quit in the middle of something. If he started a job, he'd finish it. It was almost like a moral thing for him. He was what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for...
Alleging that the Mormons had committed a long list of treasonous acts, in May 1857 Buchanan dispatched a contingent of federal officials to restore the rule of law in Utah, including a new territoria...
A. Alvarez The Savage God: A Study of Suicide
I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of use were...
With the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them;
Traumatized people find themselves reenacting some aspect of the trauma scene in disguised form, without realizing what they are doing….There
Pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy . . . , indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance . ....
Or that they think I’d actually let them pay for my law school if I was going to go….I’ve told them a million times that I have the best car in the world, a car that has spanned the continent from Mia...
Narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. According to DSM-IV, NPD is distinguished by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy
Ignorance.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better trea...
Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works. It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he...
When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and...
When our heroes turn out to be sleazebags, self-deception is easier than facing the facts.
When narcissists are confronted by people who disparage the legitimacy of their extravagant claims, they tend to react badly. They may plunge into depression—or become infuriated. As Gardner explained...
We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.
Using data gathered in 2011, the CDC study estimated that across all age groups, 19.3 percent of American women have been raped in their lifetimes and that 1.6 percent of American women—nearly two and...
Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.
There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. ANNIE DILLARD, HOLY THE FIRM