Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
B. F. SKINNERThe way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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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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Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER