No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
B. F. SKINNERDoes a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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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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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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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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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
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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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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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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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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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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.
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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
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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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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