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. SKINNERA 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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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. SKINNER







