When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNER…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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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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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
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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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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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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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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
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I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.
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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B. F. SKINNER