Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNERSociety attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNERExcept when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
B. F. SKINNERA 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.
B. F. SKINNERA permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNERWe shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
B. F. SKINNERThe juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B. F. SKINNERI’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
B. F. SKINNERIt 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. SKINNERWe have not yet seen what man can make of man.
B. F. SKINNERAn important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
B. F. SKINNERWe 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.
B. F. SKINNERGive me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
B. F. SKINNERLet men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. SKINNERWe 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. 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.
B. F. SKINNERScience is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
B. F. SKINNER