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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.

B. F. Skinner

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
B. F. SKINNER

Angry Beginning Force Love Power Understand Weakness
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

Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Government Leaving Source
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER

Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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

Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B. F. SKINNER

Disturb Feeling Himself Intelligence Men Personality
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Different People Trying
If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
B. F. SKINNER

Age Change Environment Try Yourself
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SKINNER

Choice Survive Value
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Anxiety Death Myself Worry
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

Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER

Problem Reality Science Technology
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNER

Easy Education Improvement Men Moon School
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Himself Men
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Community Difficult Hands Need People Right Success Wrong

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.

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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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