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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

Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
B. F. SKINNER

Children Education Himself Myself
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER

Deep Love Positive
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
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNER

Attack Help Society
Men build society and society builds men.
B. F. SKINNER

Architect Build Men Society
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Himself Men
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Explanation History Mindset Person Work
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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Disturb Feeling Himself Intelligence Men Personality
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
Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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Construction Problem Problem Solving
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Deep Destruction Genius Mad Men
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
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Effort Greatness Invention Learning Man Pain Possible Reality Word World
We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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Change Men Science See Transformation
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. SKINNER

Action Battle Boredom
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

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