Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
B. F. SKINNERAn important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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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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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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 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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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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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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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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Men build society and society builds men.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER







