B. F. Skinner Quotes

We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.

B. F. Skinner

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Quotes to Explore

• I don't see divorce as a failure. I see it as the end to a story. In a story, everything has an end and a beginning.

  

  Olga Kurylenko
  • Beginning
  • Failure
  • End

• No one person is an island.

  

  Yehuda Berg
  • Person
  • Island

• I find that nothing but very close and intense application to subjects of a scientific nature now seems at all to keep my imagination from running wild, or to stop up the void which seems to be left in my mind from a want of excitement.

  

  Ada Lovelace
  • Up
  • Mind
  • Nature

• On one hand, it seems like I've waited a long time for this.

  

  Karrie Webb
  • Time
  • Long
  • Hand

• I used to skip breakfast, but eating gets my metabolism going, so I burn more calories all day.

  

  Kate Walsh
  • Day
  • Breakfast
  • Eating

• They're very strong in memory. Didn't do very much in microprocessors or digital signal processing.

  

  Jack Kilby
  • Strong
  • Memory
  • Digital

• I was born in Coney Island. I like to think I fell out of the womb onto the fun park's giant Parachute Jump while eating a Nathan's hot dog.

  

  Harold Feinstein
  • Fun
  • Think
  • Dog

• The difficulty is capturing surprise on film.

  

  F. Murray Abraham
  • Film
  • Surprise
  • Difficulty

• Ball parks are smaller and baseballs are livelier. They've practically got pitchers wearing straitjackets. Bah! They still allow the knuckleball, and that is three times as hard to control.

  

  Ed Walsh
  • Control
  • Times
  • Three

• When I was competing, I would run daily 20 kilometers, and in addition to that, I'd put in many hours of fighting and sparring. That's why I was always able to keep the speed in the ring. I would train so hard that sometimes it was not only hard to stand up, but it would also be hard to lay down.

  

  Fedor Emelianenko
  • Up
  • Why
  • Fighting

• Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.

  

  Wendell Phillips
  • Business
  • Today
  • Fear

• Someone's energy and aura and soul are so much more important - they don't compare to what you have on.

  

  Rachel Roy
  • Important
  • Soul
  • Energy

• Cute in Ireland meant cunning and devious … And I'm not sure that I'm not.

  

  Malachy McCourt
  • Cute

• The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

  

  Rabindranath Tagore
  • Earth

• I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.

  

  Ben Jonson
  • Honor

• Who's gonna love you when it all falls down?Who's gonna love you when your bankroll runs out?Who's gonna care when the novelty's over?When the star of the show isn't you anymore.Nobody cares when the tears of a clown fall down(I guess your mama never told you what goes around comes back around).

  

  Mariah Carey
  • Fall
  • Star
  • Tears

• Almost every economist agrees that the American health care system is unsustainable. Medical care is so expensive that it is busting all of our budgets - government, business, and personal. Eventually, the medical price bubble will pop. What, then, are the alternatives?

  

  Jim Cooper
  • Business
  • American
  • Health

• The game in beauty is changing so much, if your product isn't high tech or can't make a unique performance claim - plump your lips, reduce your lines, look glossy, and stay on for 24 hours - you can't go to market today. I'm not just talking about a $20 lipstick, but a $5 lipstick!

  

  Andrea Jung
  • High
  • Today
  • Game

• Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Knowledge
  • Ignorance
  • Honesty

• Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by the way?

  

  Alice James
  • People
  • Way
  • Courage

• Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.

  

  Aristotle
  • People
  • Learn
  • Brave

• Donald Verrilli has argued 37 cases in five years on behalf of the [Barak] Obama administration. Many of them turned out to be truly landmark cases. He is the seventh-longest-serving solicitor general in American history.

  

  Dahlia Lithwick
  • American
  • History
  • Years

• We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.

  

  B. F. Skinner