B. F. Skinner famous quotes

A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Perseverance #Real

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Views #Mysterious

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

#Reality #Important #Way

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Baby #Curiosity

It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Done #Starting #Made

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Inspiring #Education #Book

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

#Education #Important #Skins

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

#Graduation #Education #Teacher

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

#Real #Science #Technology

At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Intelligent #Men #Numbers

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Doe #May

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Probability #Consequence

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

#Punishment #Way #Psychological

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

#Teacher #Teaching #Way

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Names #What Is Love #Vices

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences
-- B. F. Skinner

#Behavior #Consequence

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Society #Individual #Helpless

Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Men #Genius #Chaos

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

#Weakness #Power Of Love #Force

To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Different #Variables #Way

The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Men #Genius

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
-- B. F. Skinner

#Problem #Problem Solving #Construction

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Real #Thinking #Men

Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. 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

#Teacher #Teaching #Tasks

Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. From the point of view of the whole group there's no gain whatsoever, and perhaps a loss.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Loss #Men #Views

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

#Education #Reality #Design

Men build society and society builds men.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Men

Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Understanding #Way

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Change #Age #Trying

I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Believe #Dying #Not Afraid

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Children #World #Favors

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

#Rats #Taught #Said

In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomous in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can therefore be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view, together with its associated practices, must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Practice #Views #Together

Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Punishment #Doe #Tasks

The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Violence #Looks #World

I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Lying #Men #Differences

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

#Self #Behavior #Given

I've had only one idea in my life - a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible - the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior. In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate. I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, 'Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!
-- B. F. Skinner

#Selfish #Ideas #Desire

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

#Tendencies #Aggression #Clear

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#People #Trying #Different

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

#Men #Let Me #Wells

We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Men

Any single historical event is too complex to be adequately known by anyone. It transcends all the intellectual capacities of men. Our practice is to wait until a sufficient number of details have been forgotten. Of course things seem simpler then! Our memories work that way; we retain the facts which are easiest to think about.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Memories #Men #Thinking

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Absence #Force #Restraint

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
-- B. F. Skinner

#Mean #People #Admire

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Jobs #Long #Psychology

Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Running #Powerful #Winning

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Philosophy #Answers #May

The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for. The rest is a day-to-day enjoyment of life. That's the explanation for your Father Divines; people naturally flock to anyone they can trust for the necessities of life... They are the backbone of a community--solid, trust-worthy, essential.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Father #Responsibility #People

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Survival #Values

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.
-- B. F. Skinner

#War #Believe #Men

...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Ignorance #Knowing #Sake

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Effort #Mind #Behaviour

To say that a man is sinful because he sins is to give an operational definition of sin. To say that he sins because he is sinful is to trace his behavior to a supposed inner trait. But whether or not a person engages in the kind of behavior called sinful depends upon circumstances which are not mentioned in either question. The sin assigned as an inner possession (the sin a person "knows") is to be found in a history of reinforcement.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Men #Giving #Definitions

Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Justice #Doe #Behavior

The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called 'conditioning'. In operant conditioning we 'strengthen' an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Reinforcement #Facts #Behavior

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Book #Reading #Knowing

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Illusion #Humans

That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Teaching #Behavior #Contingency

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

#Boredom #Despair #Battle

A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Technology #Comfort #Damage

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

#School #Men #Moon

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

#Government #Source

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Order #Years #Style

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Men #Years #Doe

The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Intelligent #Men #Personality

To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Loyalty #Citizens #May

Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Punishment #People #Threat

Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another, and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements
-- B. F. Skinner

#Practice #Achievement #Society

A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Sex #Children #Men

The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Real #Book #Men

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

#Wish #Facts #Accepting

I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Worry #Anxiety #Dying

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
-- B. F. Skinner

#Environmental #Doe #Poet

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Children #Giving

Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Men #Years #World

Overcrowding can be corrected only by inducing people not to crowd, and the environment will continue to deteriorate until polluting practices are abandoned.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Practice #People #Crowds

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

#Education #Advantage #Ends

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Mind #Evolution #Said

Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.
-- B. F. Skinner

#War #Practice #People

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

#Numbers #Balance #World

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Honesty #Intellectual

The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #Achievement #Sound

The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Education #World #Impossible

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

#Country #Age #Enjoy

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

#Running #Interesting #Principles

Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code - a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren't any right people.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Hands #People #Community

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.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Jesus #Men #Opposites

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

#Tasks #Students #Behavior

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Taken #Pieces #Music Is

The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Individual

The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of "winning friends.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Teacher #Winning #Parent

A culture must be reasonably stable, but it must also change, and it will presumably be strongest if it can avoid excessive respect for tradition and fear of novelty on the one hand and excessively rapid change on the other.
-- B. F. Skinner

#Hands #Culture #Novelty

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

#Men