B. F. Skinner Quotes

71 Sourced Quotes

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.

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

B. F. Skinner
We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

B. F. Skinner
In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty— or, it may be, war and want— but we must vote for a man.

B. F. Skinner
We are all controlled by the world in which we live, and part of that world has been and will be constructed by men. The question is this: are we to be controlled by accidents, by tyrants, or by ourselves in effective cultural design?

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
The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of "winning friends.

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

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

B. F. Skinner
Instead of saying that a man behaves because of the consequences which are to follow his behavior, we simply say that he behaves because of the consequences which have followed similar behavior in the past. This is, of course, the Law of Effect or operant conditioning.

B. F. Skinner
It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

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

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

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
The Law of Inhibition. The strength of a reflex may be decreased through presentation of a second stimulus which has no other relation to the effector involved.

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

B. F. Skinner
A person is not an originating agent; he is a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect.

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
Overcrowding can be corrected only by inducing people not to crowd, and the environment will continue to deteriorate until polluting practices are abandoned.

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

B. F. Skinner
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.

B. F. Skinner
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.

B. F. Skinner
The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.

B. F. Skinner