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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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.
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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.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.
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The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the mutations of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on.
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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.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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That's all teaching is arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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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.
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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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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