Philip Zimbardo Quotes
Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.
Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House, 2007.
This statement is often misquoted as “Important principles may and must be inflexible” which, of course, is the opposite of what he actually said.
Without Dirksen’s support, LBJ could not have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending legal segregation. However, the conservative wing of the Republican Party had strongly opposed the idea of the Federal Government using its power to control and regulate issues that involved local practice and custom and trampled on states’ rights. Dirksen, who personally was not a racist like many conservatives were at the time, faced the dilemma and came down on the side of ending legal discrimination even if it meant violating the principle of limited federal government. When asked about his seeming inconsistency (which was often), this was his brilliant response. Producing one of the best political quotations of all time.
The earliest expression of this idea was by the British Economist John Maynard Keynes -- Quotation {610150}
Philip George Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which was later severely criticised for both ethical and scientific reasons. He has authored various introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox, and The Time Cure. He is also the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project.
