The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNERI 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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…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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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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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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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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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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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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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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.
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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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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B. F. SKINNER