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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.

B. F. Skinner

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER

Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. SKINNER

Action Battle Boredom
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
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
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER

Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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
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
Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Learning Need Teaching
If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
B. F. SKINNER

Age Change Environment Try Yourself
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. SKINNER

Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
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
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Action Inspirational Journey Start
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNER

Easy Education Improvement Men Moon School
The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNER

Carry Important Positive Reality Way
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER

Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
B. F. SKINNER

Children Education Himself Myself

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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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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Popular Authors

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