Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNER
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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNER -
I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
B. F. SKINNER -
We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
B. F. SKINNER -
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. SKINNER -
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.
B. F. SKINNER -
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. SKINNER -
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
B. F. SKINNER -
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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…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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Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER -
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. SKINNER