Stanley Milgram

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

“It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”

“Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.”

“It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action.”

“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”