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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.

B. F. Skinner

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
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
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.
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Comfortable Dedication Development Production Science Technology
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Born Intelligence Man Moments Problem Solve
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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Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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Age Country Enjoy
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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Difference Lying Men
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
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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Effort Greatness Invention Learning Man Pain Possible Reality Word World
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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Action Inspirational Journey Start
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
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. SKINNER

Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory

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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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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