The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. SKINNERThe major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
-
-
Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
B. F. SKINNER -
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
B. F. SKINNER -
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER -
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER -
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
B. F. SKINNER -
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER -
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. SKINNER -
I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
B. F. SKINNER -
The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
B. F. SKINNER -
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 -
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
B. F. SKINNER -
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B. F. SKINNER