B.F. Skinner Quotes
Top 77 wise famous quotes and sayings by B.F. Skinner
B.F. Skinner Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from B.F. Skinner on Wise Famous Quotes.
I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
To say that ... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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.
If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that's necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
Not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.
The final state of affairs may not have been foreseen. Perhaps we are merely reading a plan into the world after the fact.
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
Going out of style isn't a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year's dress in order to make it worthless.
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.
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.
The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of heart than with singleness of opportunity.
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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.
If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.
The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.
The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.
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.
The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background.
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.
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.
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.