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.
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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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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Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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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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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.
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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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A 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.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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