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

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.

That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

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.

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.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.

The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

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.

Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

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.

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we’re all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.

People think they have a perfect idea of who you are from a four-second Snapchat video… and fake blogs, stories, magazine covers. In reality, that’s not the case. Nobody knows who I am except family and my close friends.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Mystery is the number one conjurer of ideas.

The idea of putting out an album is quite exciting because it’s sharing your creativity with people. There’s no ambition to be famous. I couldn’t care less about that.

Keep your mind open to change all the time. Welcome it. Court it. It is only by examining and reexamining your opinions and ideas that you can progress.

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

If everybody trusts one another, then the person who didn’t prevail will faithfully execute the decision as if it was their idea.