When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERIt is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Men build society and society builds men.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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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.
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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
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Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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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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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.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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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. SKINNER