Quote

Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.

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
Despair
Battle
Minutes
Gesture
May
Gestures
Every
Boredom
Something
Height
Bored
Minute

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

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That's all teaching is arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
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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.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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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.
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Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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.
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
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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.
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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.
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A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
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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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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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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. Skinner
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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.
B. F. Skinner
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Overcrowding can be corrected only by inducing people not to crowd, and the environment will continue to deteriorate until polluting practices are abandoned.
B. F. Skinner