Quote

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

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
Something
Breeds
Men
Produced
Chaos
Offers
Genius
Education
Society
Behaviorism
Language
Geniuses

More quotes by 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
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.
B. F. Skinner
Image
Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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 one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.
B. F. Skinner
Image
A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
B. F. Skinner
Image
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. Skinner
Image
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
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 major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. Skinner
Image
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.
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
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
Image
Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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
The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
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
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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
Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. Skinner