Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
B. F. SKINNERThe one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
-
-
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNER -
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
B. F. SKINNER -
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER -
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. SKINNER -
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
B. F. SKINNER -
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER -
A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
B. F. SKINNER -
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER -
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 -
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER -
The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.
B. F. SKINNER -
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. SKINNER -
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER