The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNERScience is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
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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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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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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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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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Society 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.
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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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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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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
B. F. SKINNER







