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A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.

B. F. Skinner

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

Book Education Inspirational Love Reading Teaching
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.
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Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Deep Love Positive
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Behavior Change Teaching Transformation
Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
B. F. SKINNER

Acceptance Education Honesty Intellectual Value
Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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Change Men Science See Transformation
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
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. SKINNER

Difference Lying Men
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
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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Important Talk
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Different People Trying
To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try

A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.

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A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.

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Popular Authors

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