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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.

B. F. Skinner

We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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Book Education Inspirational Love Reading Teaching
It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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Education Enjoyment Life
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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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Avoid Learning Person Punishment Simplicity Way
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
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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Accomplishment Education Fear Live Punishment Trouble
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem Reality Science Technology
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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Blame Born Education Failure Live Ourselves Understand Way Wrong
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
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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Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Children Education Himself Myself
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Deep Destruction Genius Mad Men
…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
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Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
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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Important Talk
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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Attack Help Society

Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.

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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.

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