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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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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
Culture
Novelty
Hands
Stable
Also
Strongest
Excessively
Change
Avoid
Presumably
Must
Tradition
Reasonably
Respect
Rapid
Hand
Excessive
Fear
Rapids
More quotes by B. F. Skinner
To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. Skinner
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
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.
B. F. Skinner
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
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
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
B. F. Skinner
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
If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
That's all teaching is arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. Skinner
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.
B. F. Skinner
A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
B. F. Skinner
The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
B. F. Skinner
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. Skinner
