The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. SKINNERWe shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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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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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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…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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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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