When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERScience is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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Men build society and society builds men.
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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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If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
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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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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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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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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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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. SKINNER