Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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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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Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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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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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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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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 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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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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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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 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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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