Stanley Milgram - The Stanley Milgram Website

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Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist. (1974)
[From a description of his methodology in his doctoral dissertation, a conformity experiment using an adaptation of the Asch group-pressure procedure] With tape recordings it is easy to create synthetic groups. Tapes do not have to be paid by the hour and they are always available. (1961)
With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. .A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. (1965)
[From Milgram's reply to a critic who claimed that most subjects in the obedience experiments discovered that the shocks were not real but continued anyway because they didn't want to ruin the experiment] Orne's suggestion that the subjects only feigned sweating, trembling, and stuttering to please the experimenter is pathetically detached from reality, equivalent to the statement that hemophiliacs bleed to keep their physicians busy. (1972)
[From Milgram's reply to Baumrind's ethical critique of the obedience experiments] I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals. (1964)
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. (1974)
It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974)
.The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often 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. (1974)