Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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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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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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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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
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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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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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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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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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