B. F. Skinner 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.

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 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.

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

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

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

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

It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.