70+ B. F. Skinner Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

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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Born Intelligence Man Moments Problem Solve
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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Born Intelligence Man Moments Problem Solve
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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Abuse Deep Education Important Listening Mental Skin Talk Violence
The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
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Army Battle Fear People
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Act Chance Repeat
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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Effort Greatness Invention Learning Man Pain Possible Reality Word World
Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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Accomplishment Education Fear Live Punishment Trouble
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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Admire Explanation Extent People Word
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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Avoid Learning Person Punishment Simplicity Way
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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Different People Trying
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Behavior Change Teaching Transformation
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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Deep Love Positive
Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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Creation Environment Himself History Poem Poet Production
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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Children Men Necessary Play Punishment Sex Violence
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.
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Children Deserve Economic Gift Goodness Love Quality Serve Woman World
Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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Acceptance Science Willing
A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Experience Music Pieces
The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.
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Feeling Man Rule Talk
Behavior is determined by its consequences.
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Attitude Determination
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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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
Teachers must learn how to teach they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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Education Learning Need Teaching
But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
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Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Attitude Judgement Person
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
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Children Education Himself Myself
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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Angry Beginning Force Love Power Understand Weakness
Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.
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Important Talk

B. F. Skinner Quotes

Famous American psychologists