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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.

B. F. Skinner

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Judgement Person
We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
B. F. SKINNER

Angry Beginning Force Love Power Understand Weakness
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER

Deep Love Positive
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

Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. SKINNER

Animal Difference Learning People
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
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Build Education Impossible Live Philosophy Problem World
It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
B. F. SKINNER

Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Born Breed Education Genius Men Production
It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Enjoyment Life
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER

Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Deep Different Way
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
B. F. SKINNER

Education End Simplicity
Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
B. F. SKINNER

Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
B. F. SKINNER

Afraid Believe Death God Myself

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More B. F. Skinner Quotes