A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
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It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
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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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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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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 problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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