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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.

B. F. Skinner

The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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Animal Difference Learning People
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Behavior Change Teaching Transformation
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Attitude Judgement Person
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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Afraid Believe Death God Myself
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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Attack Help Society
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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Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
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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Change Effort Mindset Violence
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
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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Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Act Chance Repeat
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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Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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Abuse Deep Education Important Listening Mental Skin Talk Violence
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Education End Simplicity
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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Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
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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Change Destroy Fashion Process Style Worth

I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.

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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.

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