B. F. Skinner Quotes - Page 4

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli

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.

The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.

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.

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.

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.

The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the "mutations" of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly.

The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.