A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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 problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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A 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.
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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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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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
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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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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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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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