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. – Philip Zimbardo
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. – Philip Zimbardo
Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge. – Philip Zimbardo
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. – Philip Zimbardo
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
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
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.’ – Philip 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
What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people. – Philip Zimbardo
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. – Philip Zimbardo
Careers in virtually all academic disciplines are fostered by being a superstar who knows more about one subject than anyone else in the world. – Philip Zimbardo
One can’t live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us. – Philip Zimbardo
I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn’t pay the rent. – Philip Zimbardo
When someone is anonymous, it opens the door to all kinds of antisocial behavior, as seen by the Ku Klux Klan. – Philip Zimbardo
My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college. – Philip Zimbardo
What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality? – Philip Zimbardo
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
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
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. – Philip Zimbardo
There are no limits to what I would do to make my classes exciting, interesting, unpredictable. – Philip Zimbardo
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. – Philip Zimbardo
That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The ‘situation’ is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training. – Philip Zimbardo