B. F. Skinner Quotations

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

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

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

The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.

The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.

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

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

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

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

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They're not creating it; they're not initiating anything. It's all found somewhere else. That's an awful lot to relinquish.

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.

Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?

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.

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.

You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.

Behavior used to be reinforced by great deprivation; if people weren't hungry, they wouldn't work. Now we are committed to feeding people whether they work or not. Nor is money as great a reinforcer as it once was. People no longer work for punitive reasons, yet our culture offers no new satisfactions.

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.

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.

I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.

No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.

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

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.

We have not yet seen what man can make of man.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful.

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.

What is sought can never produce the seeking.

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.

I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills.

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.

Religions work for their own aggrandizement - strengthen the church and so on - and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.

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

I don't think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.

I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was still somewhat bothered by... worried... about religion. I remember going to this professor of philosophy and telling him that I had lost my faith.

The point is for the governor-elect to, first of all, have an opportunity to talk directly with commuters and business men and women about his vision for tackling the state's transportation challenges.

We are practicing with Hartland and they will get us prepared. They've been there the last four years and we should learn from them. They are a great program.

We strip them down to bare bones and add the armor material and the protected glass and then put them back together. We put them together so that you can't tell that they're armored at first glance.

We didn't crash the party. We're part of this league now. People are going to have to get used to this.

We respect the prerogative of debate organizers to conduct the debate sponsors as they see fit. We would welcome Russ Potts if the organizers wanted to invite him.

What happens is the cases that we are talking about here have involved elderly people or people with compromised immune systems who come into contact with this water. It can enter the body through a cut or scratch or some kind of abrasion and if it is not treated with antibiotics it can lead to bloodstream or other kinds of infections.

What's nice is even the kids that didn't make it through get to concentrate on the team tournament. They can focus their energy on that. It's great having everyone in the wrestling room.

We're getting reports of clusters of cases of diarrheal illness, ... In these shelters, it's important for the medical professionals to pay close attention to hygiene.

Ultimately, we weren't ready to play, and (Murrieta) played hard. You can't let a team totally dominate you for 40 minutes and expect that, in the next 40 minutes, you can come back, because Murrieta is a good team. You just can't allow that to happen.

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences

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.

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

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.

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.

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

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

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.

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.

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

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.

The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.

That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

We did just enough to get the win. We need to be a little more inspired, and we weren't.

We shared the basketball after that 13-point (Oklahoma State) lead. We started getting good shots. We made plays.

We're just trying to put our heads above water here. We put ourselves in a hole and we're just trying to get out of it.

We're here at college to learn, ... If gambling gets in the way of learning, it can be a hindrance to what Eastern offers as a university.

When troops arrived a few weeks ago, they saw a lot of other chains and wondered why we weren't there.

When they went up by two, our kids could have folded up the tent and quit. I think that's a good testament to these kids. From start to finish, they deserved to win this game.

When the star of your series gets killed, everybody wants to know why. Everybody starts opening their eyes.

We've never done anything like this before. It's going to be difficult, but we'll be there as long as the troops need us.

There are only 30 cars. If it was all equalized, some places like P.E.I. or New Brunswick might not get one at all. This is just about trying to create some excitement.

Let's face it, he was a beast in there. He just went in there and challenged them. That's what a senior does, he puts you on his back and carries you.

Many SWANA members have dealt with the solid waste generated in natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, ... I think we can pull together a compendium of the most effective techniques that can be used in the areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

So it looks like it all go on as planned.

Some of my coaches run. Some lift weights. I play basketball. It's what I do.

Mike is a perfect fit for the brand because he has been a long time wearer of the Classics range and a fan of the Reebok brand.

No one should assume the imminent release of these photos at this point,

My hats off to Todd, he ran a good race. I just finished second, what can you say. We ran really good.

Newspapers across the state have referred to those ads as vile, loathsome, a smear.

Obviously, the most disappointing thing is we just didn't do the things we had to do at the end, communicate. There was a little break down in communication, you know. They didn't have any more time-outs and I didn't think that they could run a play that was going to give them a good enough look that we couldn't defend.

Obviously, I would've preferred them to say you're general manager, but I'm hoping that's what I'll get.

Right from the start, it was obvious that Virginia wanted the game. I just think Virginia wanted the game more than we did.

I worked the team finals in 1988. It was pretty cool. It brings back a lot of memories. And I still have a lot of ties there - a lot of family, friends and former teammates.

If we play Friday, then everything works out OK. If we have to play Thursday, we'll be put at a huge disadvantage.

I don't know of a better way to lift a team.

I don't care which team you play in this league, they're no trap games. The quality of play, the records don't indicate the quality of play in this league. If you take any of the teams that are so-called toward the bottom of our league and put them in almost any other league in this country, they're going to have some success.

I don't care which team you play in this league, there are no trap games.

I am honored. The opportunity to serve the listeners of KDNK again is a dream come true for me. I look forward to moving into the future with the dynamic volunteers and the delightful staff at our community access radio station. And I can't wait to get on the air!

I feel they should have been able to provide this information a lot quicker than they did. These kids, the state is their family. The state needs to look out for them, and the state needs to keep track of them.

I can't see how any woman can find time to do to herself all the things that must apparently be done to make herself beautiful and, having once done them, how anyone without the strength of mind of a foreign missionary can keep up such a regime.

Getting to the semifinals for a lot of guys that were there, it wasn't enough. We would like to go farther this year. It's going to come down to whose got the most heart, and you also need a little bit of luck.

Give Florida State credit. They continued to attack. They didn't quit.

From Tom I really learned I could be the coach I wanted to be while being the person I wanted to be.

I don't think anyone thinks these one-time expenditures are going to solve the transportation challenges.

I don't think we're crashing their party. We're part of this. You might as well get used to this. There are some new people in town, and you'll hopefully welcome us with open arms.

I don't think we're crashing their party. We're all part of a new league and you might as well get used to this.

I don't understand the discrepancy. You can call whatever you want against us. It's got to be the same on both ends.

If we were to do this, we're essentially saying we're going to take the funding out of the general fund. We're going to take the revenue sources out of education, we're going to take it out of community colleges.

He has acted on the majority of them so far.

He has a proven track record in our community and has already helped start specific programs that we haven't had in the past.

He finally woke up. He was a late riser for us today.

He'd rise early and wake me up, drag my butt out of bed. But I was never afraid of competition. I would make him come out with me to play at night.

He gives us a big advantage. In the high school game, that play is used a lot, and he executes it nearly perfectly.

When he was in school and worked in the store, I think the interaction between people is really what gained his interest.