It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
B. F. SKINNERWe admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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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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The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
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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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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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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER