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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

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
B. F. SKINNER

Construction Problem Problem Solving
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER

Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Behavior Change Teaching Transformation
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
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
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
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
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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Cry Goodness Life Wait
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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Attack Help Society
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Community Difficult Hands Need People Right Success Wrong
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Comfortable Dedication Development Production Science Technology

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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Popular Authors

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