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. SKINNERThe consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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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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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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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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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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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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