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.
B. F. SKINNERThe major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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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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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.
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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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Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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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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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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.
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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
B. F. SKINNER







