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.
B. F. SKINNERThe simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.
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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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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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