Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
B. F. SKINNERIt is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
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In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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