Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
B. F. SKINNEREducation is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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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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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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The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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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.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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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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.
B. F. SKINNER