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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.

B. F. Skinner

Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
B. F. SKINNER

Dignity Freedom People Punishment
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
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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Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Avoid Learning Person Punishment Simplicity Way
The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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Army Battle Fear People
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Education End Simplicity
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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Attitude Determination
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
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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Build Education Impossible Live Philosophy Problem World
If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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Age Change Environment Try Yourself
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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.
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Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. SKINNER

Men Question Reality Technology Thinking

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 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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Popular Authors

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