A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps.

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.

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

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

Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

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.

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.