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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

B. F. Skinner

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
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Baby Curiosity Death Education Force Motivational Work
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
The 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.
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Affection Friendship Parents Problem Win
…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
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Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
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.
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Achievement Book Education Greatness Love Reading Study Teacher
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Deep Destruction Genius Mad Men
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.
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Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
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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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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Age Country Enjoy
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
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Consumer Future People Save World
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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Admire Explanation Extent People Word
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Children Education Himself Myself
The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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Build Education Impossible Live Philosophy Problem World
The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
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Cry Goodness Life Wait
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Control Himself Men
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.
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Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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Accomplishment Education Fear Live Punishment Trouble
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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Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
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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Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
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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Feeling Man Rule Talk
I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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Anxiety Death Myself Worry
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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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem Reality Science Technology

We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

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