Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNERA person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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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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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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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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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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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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In 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.
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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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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.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNER