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.
B. F. SKINNERIf freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
-
-
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 -
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER -
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. SKINNER -
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. SKINNER -
The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
B. F. SKINNER -
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
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 -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
B. F. SKINNER