The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNERI 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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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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Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
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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 first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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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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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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The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
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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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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
B. F. SKINNER