The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNERWas putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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