When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERBut restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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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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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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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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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.
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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.
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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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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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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER