What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNERI’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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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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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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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 problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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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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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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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.
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