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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.

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
Wells
Stop
Well
Impossible
Behaviorism
Must
Education
Solved
World
Greater
Importance
Rather
Remains
Language
Build
Problem
Building
Live
Shall

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

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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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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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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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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. From the point of view of the whole group there's no gain whatsoever, and perhaps a loss.
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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.
B. F. Skinner
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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.
B. F. Skinner
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That's all teaching is arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B. F. Skinner
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A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
B. F. Skinner
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If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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
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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.
B. F. Skinner
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The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B. F. Skinner
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B. F. Skinner
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In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.
B. F. Skinner
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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.
B. F. Skinner