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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
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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
Development
Damage
Conveniences
Technology
Developed
Trivial
Science
Production
Exhausting
Productions
Convenience
Vast
Dedication
Labor
Reduce
Physical
Dedicated
Comfort
Prevent
Terminate
More quotes by B. F. Skinner
The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
B. F. Skinner
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner
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
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
B. F. Skinner
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
B. F. Skinner
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
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
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
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. Skinner
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?
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
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
To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. Skinner
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
If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
B. F. Skinner
The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. Skinner
...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
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
Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. Skinner
