Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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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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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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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.
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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.
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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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 child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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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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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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