Philip Zimbardo quotes

Philip Zimbardo is an American psychologist, best known for conducting the Stanford prison experiment. His research has significantly influenced our understanding of human behavior, authority, and conformity. He has written numerous books and remains a prominent figure in the field of social psychology. Here are 40 of his quotes:

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

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

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

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 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

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.

Philip Zimbardo

Academic success depends on research and publications.

Philip Zimbardo

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.

Philip Zimbardo

Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse.

Philip Zimbardo

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

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

Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.

Philip Zimbardo

There are no limits to what I would do to make my classes exciting, interesting, unpredictable.

Philip Zimbardo

I started studying shyness in adults in 1972. Shyness operates at so many different levels. Out of that research came the Stanford shyness clinic in 1977.

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

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

Philip Zimbardo

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.

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

If you put good apples into a bad situation, you'll get bad apples.

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

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

Philip Zimbardo