Words matter. These are the best B. F. Skinner Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
I never really expected to be controversial.
Religions work for their own aggrandizement – strengthen the church and so on – and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.
If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.
Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was still somewhat bothered by… worried… about religion. I remember going to this professor of philosophy and telling him that I had lost my faith.
I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.
The environment shapes people’s actions.
Reinforcement is being right.
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.
Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.
I’m very pessimistic.
Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future – journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists – tend not to be powerful.
I won’t say that I’m an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know… but I’m not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.
I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They’re not creating it; they’re not initiating anything. It’s all found somewhere else. That’s an awful lot to relinquish.
What is sought can never produce the seeking.
The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.
The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.
Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people’s daily lives with a sense of achievement.
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
I don’t know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it.
I don’t think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.
If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
