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

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...

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...

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.

But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.

The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his...

It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chamberswere built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same...