Stanley Milgram Quotes

19 quotes in 345 categories

• It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action.
• The soldier does not wish to appear a coward, disloyal, or un-American. The situation has been so defined that he can see himself as patriotic,…
• The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and…
• It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how…
• A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so…
• When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The…
• And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.
• Perhaps the challenge is to invent the political structure that will give conscience a better chance against authority.
• Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.
• I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This…
• Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when…
• Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.
• It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps…
• The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
• Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when…
• But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes…
• It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps…
• The state produced in the laboratory may be likened to a light doze, compared to the profound slumber induced by the preponent authority system of…
• The key to the behavior of subjects lies not in pent-up anger or aggression, but in the nature of their relationship to authority. They have…

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