Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B. F. SKINNERThe mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
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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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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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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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…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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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Going out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
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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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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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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 first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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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.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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 child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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