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.
B. F. SKINNERUnable 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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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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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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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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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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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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It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER