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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

B. F. Skinner

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
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.
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Decision Design Direction Education Life Myself Reality
A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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Children Men Necessary Play Punishment Sex Violence
To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
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
If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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Age Change Environment Try Yourself
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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Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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Army Battle Fear People
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
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 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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Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Problem Reality Science Technology
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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Acceptance Education Honesty Intellectual Value
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Education End Simplicity
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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Choice Survive Value
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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Education Enjoyment Life

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

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