I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
B. F. SKINNERWe do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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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 permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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