black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.

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

Explanation History Mindset Person Work
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Children Men Necessary Play Punishment Sex Violence
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. SKINNER

Happiness Man Production Skill
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
B. F. SKINNER

Education End Simplicity
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. SKINNER

Action Battle Boredom
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Himself Men
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Community Difficult Hands Need People Right Success Wrong
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Affection Friendship Parents Problem Win
Men build society and society builds men.
B. F. SKINNER

Architect Build Men Society
I 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.
B. F. SKINNER

Anxiety Death Myself Worry
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER

Deep Love Positive
…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. SKINNER

Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
B. F. SKINNER

Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
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. SKINNER

Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER

Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Himself Men

Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More B. F. Skinner Quotes