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The 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. Skinner

An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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Abuse Deep Education Important Listening Mental Skin Talk Violence
A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Experience Music Pieces
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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Attack Help Society
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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Action Inspirational Journey Start
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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Attitude Citizenship Destroy Loyalty Promise
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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Age Country Enjoy
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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Acceptance Education Honesty Intellectual Value
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Deep Love Positive
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
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Enjoyment Philosophy Science
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Act Chance Repeat
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Control Himself Men
I 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.
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Anxiety Death Myself Worry
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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Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Ideas Myself People Thinking Value
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Attitude Judgement Person

The 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.

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The 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More B. F. Skinner Quotes