Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
B. F. SKINNERA 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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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 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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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.
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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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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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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.
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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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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 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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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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