“Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing.”

— Philip G. Zimbardo

"The Banality of Heroism" in The Greater Good (Fall/Winter 2006/2007) http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of_heroism/, co-written with Zeno Franco
Context: Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don’t say, “This is wrong! Stop it!” you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable.

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Philip G. Zimbardo 11

American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Exp… 1933

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“People do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented.”

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Context: People do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.