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. SKINNERWe have not yet seen what man can make of man.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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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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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
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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 only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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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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If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
B. F. SKINNER