If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
B. F. SKINNERWhen we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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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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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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Men build society and society builds men.
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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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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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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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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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