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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.

B. F. Skinner

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNER

Carry Important Positive Reality Way
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Born Breed Education Genius Men Production
The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
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Effort Greatness Invention Learning Man Pain Possible Reality Word World
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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Action Inspirational Journey Start
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
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Comfortable Dedication Development Production Science Technology
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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Animal Learning Myself Teaching
It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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Change Effort Mindset Violence
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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Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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Disturb Feeling Himself Intelligence Men Personality
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
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Control Himself Men
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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Admire Explanation Extent People Word
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Deep Love Positive
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem Reality Science Technology
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Control Himself Men
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.
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Born Intelligence Man Moments Problem Solve
Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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Important Talk
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
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
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Best Disappointment Mistake Perspective Quit Try
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory

Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.

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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.

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