Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
B. F. SKINNERChaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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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.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
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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 piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Men build society and society builds men.
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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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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