Quote

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

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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
Taught
Useful
Education
Honesty
Values
Merely
Religion
Accept
Language
Intellectual
Science
Among
Puzzlement
Better
Accepting
Behaviorism
Without
Answers
Resolve

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

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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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The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... a man may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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.
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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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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. Skinner
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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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A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
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The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
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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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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.
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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
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