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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

B. F. Skinner

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

Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER

Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. SKINNER

Action Battle Boredom
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNER

Easy Education Improvement Men Moon School
The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNER

Carry Important Positive Reality Way
Men build society and society builds men.
B. F. SKINNER

Architect Build Men Society
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Explanation History Mindset Person Work
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Himself Men
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
B. F. SKINNER

Achievement Book Education Greatness Love Reading Study Teacher
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Explanation History Mindset Person Work
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Government Leaving Source
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. SKINNER

Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER

Problem Reality Science Technology
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

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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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Popular Authors

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