Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SKINNERTeachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SKINNERWhen we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERThe major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. SKINNERThe way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNERWe 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.
B. F. SKINNERA first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNERWhen we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. SKINNERSociety already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
B. F. SKINNERWe do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SKINNERIt is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
B. F. SKINNERThe real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. SKINNERSomething doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. SKINNERA disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
B. F. SKINNERThe 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.
B. F. SKINNERA permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNERI 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. SKINNER