“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.”

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’

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.

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.

That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.

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.

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

Unable 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.

Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people they finally dropped it from judo.

Let’s make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake – you know, to send the right message to kids.

I have an only child. She’s so independent and good with adults.

I never want to hurt no one to the point so they can’t go back to their children.

My father passed away in 1942, and three-four months after his death, I had to start working. There was a responsibility on my shoulders to run the household. It was my duty as the eldest child in the house.

I’m so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn’t choose to have children because I’m focused on my career. And I just don’t think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both.

Before Kady was born, I didn’t think having a kid would be such a big deal. My attitude was simple: Babies are nice, play with them, put them in the closet until the next time.

Surfing music is dead. It was just a summer craze for kids on the beach. I’m finished with it.