Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNERA 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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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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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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.
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNER