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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.

B. F. Skinner

…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. SKINNER

Ignorance Position Virtue Willing
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B. F. SKINNER

Disturb Feeling Himself Intelligence Men Personality
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Judgement Person
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. SKINNER

Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
B. F. SKINNER

Consumer Future People Save World
Men build society and society builds men.
B. F. SKINNER

Architect Build Men Society
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNER

Principle Recognition Run Study Yourself
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNER

Carry Important Positive Reality Way
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

Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
B. F. SKINNER

Construction Problem Problem Solving
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Failure Give Up Inspirational Mistake Perseverance Reality Stop Try
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. SKINNER

Attack Help Society
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.
B. F. SKINNER

Anxiety Death Myself Worry
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

Affection Friendship Parents Problem Win
Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. SKINNER

Education Learning Need Teaching

An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.

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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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