“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.”

The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.

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.

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.

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’

A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.

That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

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.

In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.

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.

The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.

Imagining anything is the first step toward creating it. Believing in a true self is what allows a true self to be born.

I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

Despair often breeds disease.

I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Kindness gives birth to kindness.

He was right – she was beating herself up about hurting his feelings. The girl was a classic martyr. She’d totally been born in the wrong century. She should have lived back when she could have gotten herself fed to some lions for a good cause.

We go to the grave of a friend saying, “A man is dead,” but angels throng about him saying, “A man is born.”