Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNERA permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
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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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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 fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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