B. F. Skinner Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word "admire" then means "marvel at."

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
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 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
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
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
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 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
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