When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERThe major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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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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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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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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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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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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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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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
B. F. SKINNER