If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
B. F. SKINNERNo 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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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 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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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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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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A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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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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