B F Skinner Quotes: top 78 famous quotes about B F Skinner

B F Skinner Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational B F Skinner quotes, sayings and quotations 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. — B.F. Skinner

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value. — B.F. Skinner

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

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli — B.F. Skinner

Behavior is determined by its consequences. — B.F. Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten. — B.F. Skinner

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control. — B.F. Skinner

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful. — B.F. Skinner

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching. — B.F. Skinner

A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources. — B.F. Skinner

To say that ... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables. — B.F. Skinner

The consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again — B.F. Skinner

That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior. — B.F. Skinner

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment. — B.F. Skinner

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences — B.F. Skinner

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself. — B.F. Skinner

We have not yet seen what man can make of man. — B.F. Skinner

Reinforcement is being right. — B.F. Skinner

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes. — B.F. Skinner

The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear. — B.F. Skinner

As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner's laboratory. — Andrew Weil

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

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that's necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom. — B.F. Skinner

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount. — B.F. Skinner

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. — B.F. Skinner

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

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories? — B.F. Skinner

small communities — B.F. Skinner

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us. — B.F. Skinner

What is sought can never produce the seeking. — B.F. Skinner

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again. — B.F. Skinner

I'm very pessimistic. — 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

When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom. — B.F. Skinner

The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry. — B.F. Skinner

The final state of affairs may not have been foreseen. Perhaps we are merely reading a plan into the world after the fact. — B.F. Skinner

Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair
or the height of a battle against boredom. — B.F. Skinner

I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying. — B.F. Skinner

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior. — B.F. Skinner

Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools? — B.F. Skinner

The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. — B.F. Skinner

Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say. — B.F. Skinner

A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies. — B.F. Skinner

The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know. — B.F. Skinner

I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it. — B.F. Skinner

The rat is always right. — B.F. Skinner

Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go. — B.F. Skinner

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa. — B.F. Skinner

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression. — B.F. Skinner

Great scientific contributions have been techniques. — B.F. Skinner

No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been. — B.F. Skinner

I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men. — B.F. Skinner

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. — B.F. Skinner

Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it. — B.F. Skinner

Men build society and society builds men. — B.F. Skinner

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. — B.F. Skinner

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. — B.F. Skinner

The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of heart than with singleness of opportunity. — B.F. Skinner

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

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

If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down. — B.F. Skinner

The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now. — B.F. Skinner

The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years. — B.F. Skinner

The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience. — B.F. Skinner

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. — B.F. Skinner

The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background. — B.F. Skinner

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive. — B.F. Skinner

I never really expected to be controversial. — B.F. Skinner

I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them. — B.F. Skinner

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. — B.F. Skinner

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.' — B.F. Skinner

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything. — B.F. Skinner

The environment shapes people's actions. — B.F. Skinner

You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements. — B.F. Skinner

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

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

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. — B.F. Skinner

The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread. — B.F. Skinner