Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNERUnable 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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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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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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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER