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.
B. F. SKINNERSome 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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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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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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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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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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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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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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Men build society and society builds men.
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