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Stanley Milgram Biography

Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiment on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale. Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing the experiment.

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Stanley Milgram Quotes

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, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.

Germany, Intuition, People, Personnel, Sort, Towns

Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Authority, People, Relatively, Resist, Resources

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

Authority, Challenges, Giving, Invent, Political

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

Awareness, Firsts, Perhaps, Puppets, Step, Steps

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 he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.

Degrees, Flow, Men, Serves, Structure, Unimpeded

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 the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Effects, Jobs, Ordinary, Part, Particular, People

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.

Action, Constitutes, Culture, Failed, Origin, Survival

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

Easy, Intermediate, Link, Links, Responsibility, Ties

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

Action, Behavior, Flowed, Responsible, Self

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.

Commands, Dwelling, Isolation, Man, Men, Requirement

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.

Coward, Defined, Patriotic, Patriotism, Soldier

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

Leadership, Psychology, Responsibility, Sense, Submission

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 moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him.

Acting, Although, Concern, Expectations, Focus, Say

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 a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals.

Dignity, Men, Powerful, Sustains, View, Views

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)

Liberation, May, Perception, Perhaps, Puppets, Society