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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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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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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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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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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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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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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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER