Quote

A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.

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
Best
Quit
Might
Error
Quitting
Disappointment
Errors
Generally
Genuine
Oversight
Situation
Attempting

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?
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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 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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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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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
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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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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
B. F. Skinner
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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.
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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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.
B. F. Skinner
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
B. F. Skinner
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Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
B. F. Skinner
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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.
B. F. Skinner
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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
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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
B. F. Skinner
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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.
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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.
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.
B. F. Skinner