Stanley Milgram Quotes

Stanley Milgram 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.

After earning a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, he taught at Yale, Harvard, and then for most of his career as a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, until his death in 1984.

His small-world experiment, while at Harvard, led researchers to analyze the degree of connectedness, including the six degrees of separation concept.

Later in his career, Milgram developed a technique for creating interactive hybrid social agents , which has since been used to explore aspects of social- and self-perception.

He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of social psychology.

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Milgram as the 46th-most-cited psychologist of the 20th century. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. August 1933 – 20. December 1984
Stanley Milgram: 11   quotes 1   like

Famous Stanley Milgram Quotes

“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.”

Source: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 205
Context: The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often 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 disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974), ch. 1: The Dilemma of Obedience
Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974)

“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.”

As quoted in The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India (1979) by V. R. Krishna Iyer
Context: 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. The fact that obedience is often a necessity in human society does not diminish our responsibility as citizens. Rather, it confers on us a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to use it humanely. And people are inventive. The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.

“If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud.”

Psychology in Today's World (1975), p. 314
Context: If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud. Full-throated song now, no humming. Many people will say it's easy to carry out this act, but not one in a hundred will be able to do it.
The point is not to think about singing, but to try to do it. Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.

“The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.”

As quoted in The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India (1979) by V. R. Krishna Iyer
Context: 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. The fact that obedience is often a necessity in human society does not diminish our responsibility as citizens. Rather, it confers on us a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to use it humanely. And people are inventive. The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.

Stanley Milgram Quotes

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

Psychology in Today's World (1975), p. 314
Context: If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud. Full-throated song now, no humming. Many people will say it's easy to carry out this act, but not one in a hundred will be able to do it.
The point is not to think about singing, but to try to do it. Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.

“When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group.”

Source: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 121
Context: 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. (Not that the group is always on the right side of the issue. Lynch mobs and groups of predatory hoodlums remind us that groups may be vicious in the influence they exert.)

“Lynch mobs and groups of predatory hoodlums remind us that groups may be vicious in the influence they exert.”

Source: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 121
Context: 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. (Not that the group is always on the right side of the issue. Lynch mobs and groups of predatory hoodlums remind us that groups may be vicious in the influence they exert.)

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

Source: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 188
Context: 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.

“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.”

Interview on Sixty Minutes (31 March 1979)
Actual quote, which can be heard in Discovery Channel's Curiosity: How Evil Are You?: I would say -- on the basis of having observed 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 be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.

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