To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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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.
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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.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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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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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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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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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNER