I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
B. F. SKINNERDo not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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 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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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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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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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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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
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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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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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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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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.
B. F. SKINNER