Philip G. Zimbardo > Quotes

“If you put good apples into a bad situation, you’ll get bad apples.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo

“The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.”
― Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

“Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“Jerry-5486: "The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that's why they broke down—just couldn't stand the pressure—they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“To be a hero you have to learn to be a deviant —
because you're always going against the conformity of the group.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo

“Before I knew that a man could kill a man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you've shared food, or whom you've slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have Learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.”
― Philip G Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect

“Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others—or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf. In short, it is “knowing better but doing worse”.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. [...]

Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. The expectations of others often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“Our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards . . . helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next. —Albert Bandura20”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

“When a power elite wants to destroy an enemy nation, it turns to propaganda experts to fashion a program of hate. What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torment them, even kill them? It requires a “hostile imagination,” a psychological construction embedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into “The Enemy.” That image is a soldier’s most powerful motive, one that loads his rifle with ammunition of hate and fear. The image of a dreaded enemy threatening one’s personal well-being and the society’s national security emboldens mothers and fathers to send sons to war and empowers governments to rearrange priorities to turn plowshares into swords of destruction.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“Most of us perceive Evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some people and not in others. Bad seeds ultimately produce bad fruits as their destinies unfold. . . Upholding a Good-Evil dichotomy also takes ‘good people’ off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible role in creating, sustaining, perpetuating, or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, teasing, bullying, rape, torture, terror, and violence.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?”
― Philip Zimbardo

“I’ve always been curious about the psychology of the person behind the mask...”
― Philip G. Zimbardo

“Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“We mortals can be fools, especially when mortal emotions rule over cool reason.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“each of us has the potential, or mental templates, to be saint or sinner, altruistic or selfish, gentle or cruel, submissive or dominant, sane or mad, good or evil. Perhaps we are born with a full range of capacities, each of which is activated and developed depending on the social and cultural circumstances that govern our lives. I”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

“We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man’s spirit than when we win his heart. —Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1954)”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“While no one can change events that occurred in the past, everyone can change attitudes and beliefs about them.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life

“One can't live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.”
― Philip Zimbardo