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" I never really expected to be controversial. "
B. F. Skinner
Expected
Controversial
Never
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" The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again. "
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" 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. "
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" Behavior used to be reinforced by great deprivation; if people weren't hungry, they wouldn't work. Now we are committed to feeding people whether they work or not. Nor is money as great a reinforcer as it once was. People no longer work for punitive reasons, yet our culture offers no new satisfactions. "
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Culture
Now
Money
" Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful. "
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Future
People
Powerful
" I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control. "
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Totalitarian
Any
Control
" The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. "
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Think
Technology
Men
" The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount. "
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More
Important
Out
" The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. "
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Will
Abandoned
Environment
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Responsible
Creating
People
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Mother
Culture
Think
" If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down. "
B. F. Skinner
Structure
Society
Rights
" The environment shapes people's actions. "
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People
Shapes
Environment
" Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. "
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Early
Society
Individual
" Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful. "
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Reinforcement
Used
Powerful
" I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me. "
B. F. Skinner
Children
History
Myself
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Trying
Mistake
Stop
" We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. "
B. F. Skinner
Teach
Books
Love
" We have not yet seen what man can make of man. "
B. F. Skinner
Man
Make
Seen
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
College
Remember
Religion
" Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything. "
B. F. Skinner
Anything
Shape
Child
" You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements. "
B. F. Skinner
Along
World
You
" The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years. "
B. F. Skinner
Think
People
Control
" I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills. "
B. F. Skinner
Business
Words
People
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Space
Stars
Intelligence
" Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. "
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Been
Learned
Forgotten
" I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men. "
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I Am
Military
Use
" Reinforcement is being right. "
B. F. Skinner
Right
Reinforcement
Being
" Great scientific contributions have been techniques. "
B. F. Skinner
Contributions
Been
Scientific
" A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment. "
B. F. Skinner
Avoid
Way
Punishment
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Kind
Church
Get