"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. The fact that obedience is often a necessity in human society does not diminish our responsibility as citizens. Rather, it confers on us a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to use it humanely. And people are inventive. The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Psychologists from the United StatesJews from the United StatesHumanistsPeople from New York CitySociologists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
As quoted in The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India (1979) by V. R. Krishna Iyer
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram (15 August 1933 – 20 December 1984) was an American social psychologist famous for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment on obedience to authority figures, conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale, and for the small-world experiment (the source of the six degrees of separation concep
10 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Stanley Milgram →
Related Quotes
"If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud. Full-throated song now, no h…"
"I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped an…"
"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority."
"When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from oth…"
"Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of i…"
"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as …"
"While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing…"
"It becomes clear that the Asch, Milgram and Zimbardo experiments replicated, in a compressed time, the dynamics of au…"
"The Milgram experiments asked participants to play the role of a “teacher,” who was responsible for administering ele…"
"… Hassan promotes the BITE model as a scientific method for identifying “destructive cults,” claiming it can distingu…"