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. SKINNERAt 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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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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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.
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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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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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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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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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Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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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.
B. F. SKINNER







