A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNERIn 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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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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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 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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Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
B. F. SKINNER