Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist..

But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the la….

Perhaps the challenge is to invent the political structure that will give conscience a better chance against authority..

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process..

Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. B….

Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through ….

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 ….

It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action..

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 he will act..

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 he th….

Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority..

Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems ….

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, coura….

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 view sustains ….

Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his….

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 mutual sup….

I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments,….

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 long as t….

Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps..

And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation..

For a person to feel responsible for his actions, he must sense that the behavior has flowed from the self..