The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
B. F. SKINNERMen build society and society builds men.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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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.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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