Stanley Milgram Quotes

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

Stanley Milgram

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

Stanley Milgram

#3. 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 therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.

Stanley Milgram

#4. 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, courageous, and manly only through compliance.

Stanley Milgram

#5. 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 support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority.

Stanley Milgram

#6. 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 our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974)

Stanley Milgram

#7. The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

Stanley Milgram

#8. 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 a far greater danger to human survival.

Stanley Milgram

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

Stanley Milgram

#10. Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority.

Stanley Milgram

#11. 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.

Stanley Milgram

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

Stanley Milgram

#13. 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 defiance or submission, to the commands of others.

Stanley Milgram

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

Stanley Milgram

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

Stanley Milgram