When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERThe real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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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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Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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Men build society and society builds men.
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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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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.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER