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.
B. F. SKINNERAn important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
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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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No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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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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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us – here and now.
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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.
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it’s merely their guess.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of “winning friends.
B. F. SKINNER