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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.

B. F. Skinner

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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Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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Army Battle Fear People
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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Carry Important Positive Reality Way
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
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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Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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Action Battle Boredom
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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Animal Difference Learning People
Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
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Change Destroy Fashion Process Style Worth
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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Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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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Born Breed Education Genius Men Production
I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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Afraid Believe Death God Myself
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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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
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.
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Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
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.
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Baby Curiosity Death Education Force Motivational Work
Men build society and society builds men.
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Architect Build Men Society
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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Attitude Determination
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
…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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Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
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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Development Mathematics Nature Process Reading Violence
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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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Blame Born Education Failure Live Ourselves Understand Way Wrong

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 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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