B. F. Skinner quotes - page 2

The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone. (B. F. Skinner)
If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment. View quote
B. F. Skinner
We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say. View quote
B. F. Skinner
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. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Ethical control may survive in small groups, but the control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists-to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies. View quote
B. F. Skinner
I do not admire myself as a person. My successes do not override my shortcomings. View quote
B. F. Skinner
It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Behavior is determined by its consequences. View quote
B. F. Skinner
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything. (B. F. Skinner)
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again. View quote
B. F. Skinner
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. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools? View quote
B. F. Skinner
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. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Men build society and society builds men. (B. F. Skinner)
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. View quote
B. F. Skinner
A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself. View quote
B. F. Skinner
...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake. View quote
B. F. Skinner
Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories? View quote
B. F. Skinner