“A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.”

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’

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.

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.

That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

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.

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.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

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.

Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

But 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.

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

I find meditative partnership with my horse, being one with another being is such as exhilarating experience

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.

Your parents don’t teach you how to heal, experience does.

All the ups and downs you’ve experienced in your life were only preparing you for what’s to come.  

You experience a lot of new things by being silent.

I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.

I grew up like a neglected weed – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

Everything you have experienced or are experiencing serves a great purpose.