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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.

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

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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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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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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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We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading.
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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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That's all teaching is arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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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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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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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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I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.
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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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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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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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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.
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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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The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.
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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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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
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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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