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. 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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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Men build society and society builds men.
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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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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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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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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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. SKINNER