To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
B. F. SKINNERI will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
B. F. SKINNER -
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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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
B. F. SKINNER -
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER -
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
B. F. SKINNER -
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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.
B. F. SKINNER







