Quotes from Philip Zimbardo

Separating the preacher from the practice, the promise from the outcome, the perceived intention from the consequence is at the crux of resistance because it is too easy to mistake the label for the thing labeled, to deal in symbols and concepts instead of people and their behavior.

Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse.

At North Hollywood High School, I was shunned by everyone. I would sit down in the cafeteria, and students would get up from the table and walk away. They thought I was from the Mafia.

Academic success depends on research and publications.

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

The world is, was, will always be filled with good and evil, because good and evil is the yin and yang of the human condition.

The line between good and evil is movable and it's permeable.

It was God who created hell as a place to store evil. He didn't do a good job of keeping it there though.

What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?

Mama, humanity is my business.

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.

Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.

Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.

There are times when external circumstances can overwhelm us, and we do things we never thought. If you're not aware that this can happen, you can be seduced by evil. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil. We have to acknowledge it. Then we can change it.

A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them.

Prejudice and discrimination have always been a big part of my life. When I was 6, I got beat up and called dirty Jew boy because they thought I looked Jewish.

Most of the evil of the world comes about not out of evil motives, but somebody saying 'get with the program, be a team player;' this is what we saw at Enron, this is what we saw in the Nixon administration with their scandal.

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?

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

One can't live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.

After doing psychology for half a century, my passion for all of it is greater than ever.

Ideas for my first experiments in human aggression came from discussions we had in a research seminar about William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.'

I'm saying to be a hero is means you step across the line and are willing to make a sacrifice, so heroes always are making a sacrifice. Heroes always take a risk. Heroes always deviant. Heroes always doing something that most people don't and we want to change - I want to democratise heroism to say any of us can be a hero.

Bullies are often people who are shy and can't make friends easily, so, as the theme of the movie 'A Bronx Tale' tells us, it is better to be feared if you can't be loved.