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. SKINNERA first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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.
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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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.
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER