Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Must
Tradition
Reasonably
Respect
Rapid
Hand
Excessive
Fear
Rapids
Culture
Novelty
Hands
Stable
Also
Strongest
Excessively
Change
Avoid
Presumably
More quotes by B. F. Skinner
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.
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
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
Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
B. F. Skinner
I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
B. F. Skinner
A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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
Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.
B. F. Skinner
A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
B. F. Skinner
Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. Skinner
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner
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.
B. F. Skinner
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.
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
When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. Skinner
Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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
That's all teaching is arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B. F. Skinner
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. Skinner
If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
B. F. Skinner
