An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
B. F. SKINNERA 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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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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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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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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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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNER