“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority." by Stanley Milgram?
Stanley Milgram photo
Stanley Milgram 11
Social psychologist 1933–1984

Related quotes

Mikhail Bakunin photo

“All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937), E.H. Carr, p. 453

Andy Andrews photo
William McDougall photo

“Hypnotism is undoubtedly the most important, the most fruitful and far-reaching method of experimental psychology.”

William McDougall (1871–1938) british psychologist

Hypnotism (1945) by Axel Wayne Bacon. In the Preface to the 1960 edition, Nelson-Hall Co., Publishers

Reza Pahlavi photo

“Those who believe they speak with the absolute authority of Allah demand absolute submission.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Statement by Reza Pahlavi of Iran - Democracy & Security Conference http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=108&page=4, Prague, Czech Republic, Jun. 5, 2007.
Speeches, 2007
Context: To the realpolitik cynics who say Islamist theocracy is a reality we have to live with, I respond: funny – they never said they can live with YOU! To those who say the theocrats can reform if we are nice to them, I say you do not know the difference between Islamist revolution and secular ones. Those who believe they speak with the absolute authority of Allah demand absolute submission.

“The proper act of reading of a poem was not an act of passive submission but one of collaboration with its author.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Drums of Morning, 1992

Alain Finkielkraut photo
Michael Moorcock photo
Jean Baudrillard photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.”

Preface to the Third Edition (August 1942)
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933)
Context: In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism. According to Marx, the social condition "capitalism" does not consist in the existence of individual capitalists, but in the existence of the specific "capitalist mode of production", that is, in the production of exchange values instead of use values, in wage work of the masses and in the production of surplus value, which is appropriated by the state or the private owners, and not by the society of working people. In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.

Related topics