The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. SKINNERSociety already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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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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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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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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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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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 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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Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
B. F. SKINNER