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. SKINNERSociety 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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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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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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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER -
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER -
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNER