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
B. F. SKINNER
B. F. Skinner on men
B. F. Skinner107 quotes“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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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner 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. SkinnerB. F. Skinner In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner 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.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Behavior is determined by its consequences.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner 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. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner 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.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner
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Carmen AmadosCarmen Amados We flew to heaven, and we touched the sun.
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More on men
This grace of God is a very great, strong, mighty and active thing. It does not lie asleep in the soul. Grace hears, leads, drives, draws, changes, works all in man, and lets itself be distinctly felt and experienced. It is hidden, but its works are evident.
Martin LutherMartin Luther God creates out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.
Martin LutherMartin Luther In my personal life I’m not very tough at all, but in my professional life, having to deal with being a woman in a man’s world, I’m really tough. I never back down from a fight or an argument. I’m willing to stand there toe to toe with anyone.
CherCher Show me where a man spends his time & money, and I’ll show you his god.
Martin LutherMartin Luther Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken No man can come to God but by an extraordinary revelation of the Spirit.
John CalvinJohn Calvin The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.
John CalvinJohn Calvin As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Alexis de TocquevilleAlexis de Tocqueville
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