B. F. Skinner Quotes - Page 2

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

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.

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

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

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.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.

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

A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them.

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.

A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.

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

Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.

No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. ... What does change is our chance of doing something about the subject of a theory. Newton's analysis of the light in a rainbow was a step in the direction of the laser.

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

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

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

The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior - verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.

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.

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

Men build society and society builds men.

Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego. Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job. But the campaigns have been badly planned and the victory has never been secured.

The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.