Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
B. F. SKINNERA 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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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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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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The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
B. F. SKINNER