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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.

B. F. Skinner

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNER

Attack Help Society
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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Book Education Inspirational Love Reading Teaching
A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
B. F. SKINNER

Comfortable Dedication Development Production Science Technology
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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Freedom Happiness Human Illusion Necessary
I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
B. F. SKINNER

Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
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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Avoid Learning Person Punishment Simplicity Way
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
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.
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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
B. F. SKINNER

Achievement Book Education Greatness Love Reading Study Teacher
To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Behavior Change Teaching Transformation
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Deep Destruction Genius Mad Men
But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
B. F. SKINNER

Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom

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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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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