The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. SKINNERSomehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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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 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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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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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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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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
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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.
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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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Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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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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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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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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
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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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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
B. F. SKINNER