Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
B. F. SKINNERGoing out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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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.
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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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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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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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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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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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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.
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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
B. F. SKINNER







