Developing character is a very delicate social process that requires time, energy, a strong family unit, and powerful community support structures.

In my experience, persons of troubled character tend to seek power ravenously and almost always abuse it when they acquire it. That’s why power is the truest test of character.

An offense involves fighting hard enough to secure a goal and remove obstacles to that goal. A defense involves expending just enough energy to ward off an attack or prevent injury.

Dealing with a skilled manipulator is often like getting whiplash: you don’t know all that’s really happened until after the damage is done.

Neurotics have a big sense of right and wrong, set high standards for themselves, and sometimes proverbially carry the world on their shoulders. In contrast, disturbed and disordered characters have a remarkably impaired, immature, or underdeveloped conscience. In some extreme cases, conscience can be absent altogether and even the capacity to form a conscience nonexistent.