At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
B. F. SKINNEROld age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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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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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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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No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
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Men build society and society builds men.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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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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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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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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