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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

B. F. Skinner

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.
B. F. SKINNER

Feeling Man Rule Talk
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
B. F. SKINNER

Deep Destruction Genius Mad Men
To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Judgement Person
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Himself Men
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
B. F. SKINNER

Angry Beginning Force Love Power Understand Weakness
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Blame Born Education Failure Live Ourselves Understand Way Wrong
It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
B. F. SKINNER

Change Effort Mindset Violence
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Affection Friendship Parents Problem Win
…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. SKINNER

Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
B. F. SKINNER

Construction Problem Problem Solving
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
B. F. SKINNER

Acceptance Education Honesty Intellectual Value
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Important Talk
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Comfortable Dedication Development Production Science Technology

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

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