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. SKINNERIt has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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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 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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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER