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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

B. F. Skinner

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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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
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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Avoid Learning Person Punishment Simplicity Way
The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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Build Education Impossible Live Philosophy Problem World
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
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.
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Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
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.
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Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
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.
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Children Men Necessary Play Punishment Sex Violence
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
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Consumer Future People Save World
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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Age Change Environment Try Yourself

…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

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Popular Authors

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