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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

B. F. Skinner

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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Anxiety Death Myself Worry
Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
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Change Destroy Fashion Process Style Worth
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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Abuse Deep Education Important Listening Mental Skin Talk Violence
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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Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
…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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Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Experience Music Pieces
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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Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
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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Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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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Difference Lying Men
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem Reality Science Technology
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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Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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Build Education Impossible Live Philosophy Problem World

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

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Popular Authors

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