To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. SKINNERThe 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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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.
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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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The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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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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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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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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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
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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.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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