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.
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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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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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Men build society and society builds men.
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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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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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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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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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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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Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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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.
B. F. SKINNER