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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

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B. F. Skinner
Age: 86 †
Born: 1904
Born: March 20
Died: 1990
Died: August 18
Autobiographer
Ethologist
Inventor
Philosopher
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Susquehanna Depot
Pennsylvania
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Skinner BF
moiksu moiii
Way
Understanding
Accident
Wrong
Accidents
Less
Blame
Learn
Failure
Language
Rest
Lives
Control
Born
Education
Behaviorism
Even
Possible
Blaming

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

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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.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. Skinner
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...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. Skinner
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I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.
B. F. Skinner
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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
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The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.
B. F. Skinner
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. Skinner
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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
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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
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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
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Punitive measures whether administered by police, teachers, spouses or parents have well known standard effects: (1) escape-education has its own name for that: truancy, (2) counterattack-vandalism on schools and attacks on teachers, (3) apathy-a sullen do-nothing withdrawal. The more violent the punishment, the more serious the by-products.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
B. F. Skinner
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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
B. F. Skinner
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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
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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