Stanley Milgram Quotes

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

One might rationally argue that individual human beings should be free choose what moral behavior they approve of, and which they don't, subject to the constraints of the law.

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

I've always believed free will is a birthright. God even allows us to choose whether to be led by the divine order

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

[Humans'] capacity to intervene, to compare, to judge, to decide, to choose, to desist makes them capable of acts of greatness, of dignity, and, at the same time, of the unthinkable in terms of indignity.

Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.

I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

All rational beings have an agency of their own; and according to their own choice they will be saved or damned.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

I feel very strongly in my opinion that everyone is responsible to themselves for what they do.

No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.

I believe very firmly in the principle of free agency - people making their own decisions and doing what they think is right.

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?