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.
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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If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
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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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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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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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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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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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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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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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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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.
B. F. SKINNER