Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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.
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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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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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.
B. F. SKINNER