Philip Zimbardo Quotes

In all of us, there is a struggle between the good and the bad. It makes it more palpable and real to play such people as an actor.

What 'Twilight Zone' did was show we all have a great capacity for good and evil.

The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim - not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good.

Good people can't out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can't think of.

The balance between good and evil, and the choices we make between them, are probably the single most important aspects shaping our personalities and humanity.

Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil.

My research for 'Adam' affected me profoundly, particularly the research into evil's underbelly. We tend not to think about evil until it pokes its head out of the air about us and then it tends to scare us silly. As well it should.

I love observing people.

I have an interest in understanding evil. Who is the bad guy - the vampire who kills people and sucks their blood, or the survivalists who kill people to save their own lives? Is evil merely a creation of people? Or is there an evil nature? Or is it in the eye of the beholder? I really like these questions.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

I love people, I love studying people more than history. So whatever situation I see, then I look at, what were the people like, more than history itself.

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

If this isn’t good versus evil, what is?

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

The failure to readily identify the battle between good and evil is a nagging, ongoing, dangerous pattern that shows no sign of easing up any time soon.

You have more real truth to draw from if you are playing evil. We see so much of it around us in our culture, and we also have so much of it in our nature, which we are always warring against, as it were.

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.

A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.

Should I be the one to play God? We're both about the same age, but we grew up in different neighborhoods.

I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

What were good and evil, really, but stupid categories? Stupid categories that restricted people and punished or rewarded them based on how they responded to their own natures, natures they really didn't have any way to control.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.