A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B. F. SKINNERAt 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.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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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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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Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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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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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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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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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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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 real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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 person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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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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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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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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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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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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