B. F. Skinner Quotes

The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. W...

Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even underst...

The most effective alternative process [to punishment] is probably extinction. This takes time but i...

At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a ...

Severe punishment unquestionably has an immediate effect in reducing a tendency to act in a given wa...

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a th...

In a pre-scientific society the best the common man can do is pin his faith on a leader and give him...

A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best...

In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy...

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

I would have been glad to agree to let them all proceed henceforth in complete ignorance of psycholo...

...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance fo...

We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few work...

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restr...

Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or ...

Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of ...

Why did colleges make their students take examinations, and why did they give grade? What did a grad...

I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not av...

If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls...

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

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way-- to show that people w...

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man ...

The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the opp...

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted ...

The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of heart than with singlene...

Promising paradise or threatening hell-fire is, we assumed, generally admitted to be unproductive. I...

Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call ...

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

Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a co...

The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds...

A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device whic...

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a conditi...

We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading.

A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The...

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew...

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made...

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.

A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how...

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

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

Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, polluti...

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