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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

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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Development Mathematics Nature Process Reading Violence
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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Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Deep Love Positive
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Education End Simplicity
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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Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
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Affection Friendship Parents Problem Win
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
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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Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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Admire Explanation Extent People Word
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
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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Attitude Determination
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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Dignity Freedom People Punishment
Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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Acceptance Science Willing
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.

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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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