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.
B. F. SKINNERA permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
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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 problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B. F. SKINNER







