The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
B. F. SKINNERThe simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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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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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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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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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER