black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.

B. F. Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER

Deep Love Positive
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Determination
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
…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. SKINNER

Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
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
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNER

Attack Help Society
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Change Effort Mindset Violence
Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
B. F. SKINNER

Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
Men build society and society builds men.
B. F. SKINNER

Architect Build Men Society
Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
B. F. SKINNER

Acceptance Education Honesty Intellectual Value
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Effort Greatness Invention Learning Man Pain Possible Reality Word World
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Anxiety Death Myself Worry
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try

To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More B. F. Skinner Quotes