Philip Zimbardo Quotes

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.

For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

It seemed to me that every adult did something terrible sooner or later. And every child, I thought, sooner or later becomes an adult.

All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad.

I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws.

A man is not good or bad for one action.

I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

People don't think of themselves as evil.

I think we're innately good. But it doesn't mean we're gonna do good all the time. It means you have to strive.

Our actions are neither so good nor so evil as our impulses.

Everybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's the choices we make that define who we really are.

In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

None are known to be good, till they have opportunity to be bad.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

It is not enough to recognize what is right and true. One must control the impulse to do what is wrong and easy.

In one sense, the Stanford prison study is more like a Greek drama than a traditional experiment, in that we have humanity, represented by a bunch of good people, pitted against an evil-producing situation. The question is, does the goodness of the people overwhelm the bad situation, or does the bad situation overwhelm the good people?

Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human.

I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.

To amend mankind, moralists should show them man, not as he is, but as he ought to be.