B. F. Skinner Quotes
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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.
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The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... a man may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.
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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.
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The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.
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The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.
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Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people's daily lives with a sense of achievement.
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We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
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A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.
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I think my novel, 'Walden Two,' has made people stop and look at the culture they have inherited and wonder if it is the last word or whether it can be changed.
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What is sought can never produce the seeking.
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I'm very pessimistic.
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If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
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I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.
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Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.
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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.
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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force.
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Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.
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The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
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The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background.
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We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
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You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.
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I never really expected to be controversial.