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.
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. SKINNERIf you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
B. F. SKINNERThe one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
B. F. SKINNERThe real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. SKINNERThe alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
B. F. SKINNERSomehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
B. F. SKINNEREducation is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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. SKINNERProblem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
B. F. SKINNERA vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
B. F. SKINNERYour liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
B. F. SKINNERIt 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.
B. F. SKINNERThose who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
B. F. SKINNERTeachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SKINNERBut 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.
B. F. SKINNERI’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
B. F. SKINNER