Quotes on Bullies

October 1999
"Most organisations have a serial bully. It never ceases to amaze me how one person's divisive dysfunctional behaviour can permeate the entire organisation like a cancer."

November 1999
"One would not expect a victim of rape to have to single-handedly identify, trace, catch, arrest, prosecute, convict and punish the person who raped her. Targets of bullying often find themselves doing all of these whilst those in positions of authority persistently abdicate and deny responsibility."

December 1999
"The serial bully, who in my estimation accounts for about one person in thirty in society, is the single most important threat to the effectiveness of organisations, the profitability of industry, the performance of the economy, and the prosperity of society."

"Bullying consists of the least competent most aggressive employee projecting their incompetence on to the least aggressive most competent employee and winning."

January 2000
"Nothing can prepare you for living or working with a sociopathic serial bully. It is the most devastating, draining, misunderstood, and ultimately futile experience imaginable."

February 2000
"The best indicator of a sociopathic serial bully is not a clinical diagnosis but the trail of devastation and destruction of lives and livelihoods surrounding this individual throughout their life."

March 2000
"I just want the bullying to stop. That is all I ever wanted. I used to love going to school. Now I hate it."
(9-year-old Verity Ward quoted in the Sunday Telegraph, 12 March 2000)

April 2000
"Being bullied by a serial bully is equivalent to being stalked or being battered by a partner or being abused as a child and should be accorded the same gravity."

May 2000
"The British education system is designed by and for physically strong, sports-oriented, academically-able, right-handed, heterosexual Caucasian males, supplemented recently by university-headed, academically-compliant, league-table-enhancing females. The only reason kids still get a good education is because of the many fine teachers who are unwilling to be subjugated by a procedurally-bound, Ofsted-straitjacketed, standards-limited, ticksheet-mentality education conveyor belt. Before they're half way through their career, this dedication results in the best teachers being stressed out, burnt out, or bullied out - often all three."

June 2000
Three points to remember if you're considering legal action:
1. The legal system has more in common with The National Lottery than a system of justice.
2. The legal system has more in common with The National Theatre than a system of justice.
3. In some countries, the legal system has more in common with The National Guard than a system of justice.

July 2000
"Many children leave school with a hatred of an education system which breeds and sustains bullying and which isolates, ridicules, and excludes those who are in any way "different". The government's obsession with "standards" is a form of political institutionalised bullying which makes teachers as likely as their pupils to be bullied. Academic exam results devalue achievement and are one of the poorest indicators of potential [ More | More] rather than inspire individual achievement are more likely to sentence individuals to a life of middle-class mediocrity."

January 2002
"Until there's a public commitment, and action to back that commitment, a policy is only words on paper."

January 2002
"Recently there's been a trend to apply the term "bullying" to any kind of conflict at work, for example overwork and long hours. Although some bullying behaviours may be present in these issues, in my view this dilutes and devalues the term "workplace bullying" which should be used only for the more serious cases of conflict involving a serial bully. If there isn't a serial bully involved, it's probably not bullying you're dealing with."

February 2002
"When bullying results in suicide (bullycide), the coroner usually records an open verdict. Unlike a physical injury or physical cause of death, a psychiatric injury cannot be studied and recorded after death. All the coroner has is (sometimes) the suicide letter and (always) the denial of everyone who contributed to the bullycide: the bullies, the witnesses of bullying, and those in authority who should have acted but didn’t. Invariably greater weight is attached to these denials than to the written and reported testimony of the deceased who has been tormented to death and to the deceased’s family who have lived through (and continue to live) the nightmare. An open verdict, which may be legally correct, is not going to relieve the suffering of the family or enable the perpetrators to be held accountable for their sins of commission and omission."

March 2002
"The challenge of being a manager is to get the best out of everybody, not just the few who are clones of yourself."

April 2002
"It is the lack of knowledge of, or the unwillingness to recognise, or the deliberate denial of the existence of the serial bully which is the most common reason for an unsatisfactory outcome for both employee and employer."

May 2002
"Only the best are bullied."

June 2002
"The vehemence with which a person denies the existence of the serial bully is directly proportional to the congruence of the person's behaviour with that of the serial bully"

July 2002
"Bullies thrive wherever authority is weak"

November 2002
"Why does the UK government ignore workplace bullying? Our system of democracy - government and law - is based on the adversarial model. To be successful in these fields, bullying behaviour is almost a prerequisite."

February 2003
"The vehemence with which anyone opposes the Dignity at Work Bill is likely to be proportional to the extent to which that person's behaviour is congruent with the profile of the serial bully."

March 2003
"Each Act of Parliament intended to address harassment and discrimination has faced objections on the basis of 'you'll never be able to prove...' and 'there's too much legislation already...'. In no case has this line of reasoning ever been sustained."

May 2003
"Today’s workplace has become heartless and soulless. Employees are seen as units of labour, automatons, functionaries, objects for achieving designated tasks, and as costs to be minimised."

March 2004
"Whilst accidents and assaults injure and kill people quickly and spectacularly, bullying and consequent prolonged negative stress injure and kill people slowly and secretively. The outcome, though, is the same."

May 2004
"Any anti-bullying scheme, initiative or policy which fails to mention accountability for the bullies is likely to meet with little, and often no, success"

June 2004
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel but first you'll have to find the light switch and change the bulb before switching it on yourself. No problem, as targets of bullying are picked on for their competence and abilities."

July 2004
"Good management and bullying have as much in common as great sex and rape."

Comedian Jo Brand interviewed in Radio Times, p13, 11-17 December 1999:
What would be your first act as world leader?
"To introduce a drug that everyone who was a bully had to take to stop them bullying other people. I'd put such a drug in the water now."

Workplace bullying - in any form - is bad for business. It destroys teamwork, commitment and morale." Tony Morgan, Chief Executive, The Industrial Society

Bully OnLine is a gold mine of insight and information on bullying which identifies the different types of harassment and bullying and exposes the serial bully. Everyone knows at least one person in their life with the profile of the serial bully. Click here to see ...who has this behaviour profile in your life?

Have a look through this web site to recognise the bullies and bullying in your life ... start with Am I being bullied? then move on to What is bullying? To find out what you can do about bullying, click Action to tackle bullying. Have a look at the profile of the serial bully which is common to sociopathic managers, harassers, stalkers, rapists, violent partners, abusers, pedophiles, even serial killers of the organized kind.

If bullying and harassment have caused injury to your health, commonly diagnosed as "stress", see the page on injury to health and the one on the psychiatric injury of trauma, a collection of symptoms congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.