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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

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

Build Education Impossible Live Philosophy Problem World
The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
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Effort Greatness Invention Learning Man Pain Possible Reality Word World
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.
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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
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.
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Consumer Future People Save World
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem Reality Science Technology
We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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Change Men Science See Transformation
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.
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Community Difficult Hands Need People Right Success Wrong
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.
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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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Easy Education Improvement Men Moon School
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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Disturb Feeling Himself Intelligence Men Personality
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
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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Children Men Necessary Play Punishment Sex Violence
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
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.
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Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
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.
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Accomplishment Education Fear Live Punishment Trouble
Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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Acceptance Science Willing

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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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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Popular Authors

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