Stanley Milgram Quotes

For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I'll try my best to fake it.

Men must learn now with pity to dispense; For policy sits above conscience.

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.

I approach my work with a passionate intensity, acting as if its success depends entirely on me. "But once I've done my best, I try to let go as much as possible and have no expectations about how my work will be received by the world."

There's always got to be room for what you might call benign corruption. Nobody blames a man who steals food to feed his starving children, but on the other hand, somebody who picks up a badge and takes an oath to serve and protect; we do expect a certain level of essential honesty.

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

Morality is a luxury we can't afford out here. There's no right or wrong, just survival or death.

We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment.

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? And dose it need superhuman efforts to recognize that revenge never can be duty? I say again that Hamlet thinks much, but that he is by no means wise.

How long had he been doing what was necessary instead of what was right? In a fair world they would be one and the same.

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it-when unpopular.

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

To withdraw ourselves from the law of the strong, we have found ourselves obliged to submit to justice. Justice or might, we must choose between these two masters.

Can those entrusted with the gravest authority set any example save that of the sternest obedience to the law?

There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.

It is better to do nothing Than to do what is wrong. For whatever you do, you do to yourself.

There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.

It is placing the Executive and the Movement in an absolutely wrong position to be taking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what you ought to do with it.

I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.