Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Even
Possible
Blaming
Way
Understanding
Accident
Wrong
Accidents
Less
Blame
Learn
Failure
Language
Rest
Lives
Control
Born
Education
Behaviorism

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

Image
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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
Image
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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
Image
A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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
Image
Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code - a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren't any right people.
B. F. Skinner
Image
A culture must be reasonably stable, but it must also change, and it will presumably be strongest if it can avoid excessive respect for tradition and fear of novelty on the one hand and excessively rapid change on the other.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another, and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements
B. F. Skinner
Image
At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
B. F. Skinner
Image
The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
B. F. Skinner