Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
B. F. SKINNERA 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
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Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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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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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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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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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.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
B. F. SKINNER







