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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.

B. F. Skinner

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.
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Affection Friendship Parents Problem Win
We 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.
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Achievement Book Education Greatness Love Reading Study Teacher
A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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Action Battle Boredom
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Children Education Himself Myself
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
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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Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
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Community Difficult Hands Need People Right Success Wrong
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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Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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Acceptance Science Willing
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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Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
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.
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Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
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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Education Enjoyment Life
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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Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory

…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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…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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Popular Authors

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