Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNERThe real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
-
-
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
B. F. SKINNER -
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 -
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
B. F. SKINNER -
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. SKINNER -
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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 -
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.
B. 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. SKINNER -
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 -
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER -
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER -
Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SKINNER -
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 -
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
B. F. SKINNER -
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 -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
B. F. SKINNER