I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
B. F. SKINNERLet men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Your 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.
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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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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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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Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER