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.
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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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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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
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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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Men build society and society builds men.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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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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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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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.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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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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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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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.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER