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.
B. F. SKINNERThe juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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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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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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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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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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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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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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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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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. SKINNER