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" I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control. "

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" 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. "

" What is sought can never produce the seeking. "

" 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. "

" I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men. "

" Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful. "

" Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful. "

" The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry. "

" We have not yet seen what man can make of man. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. "

" If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down. "

" The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount. "

" 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. "

" The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. "

" 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. "

" I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it. "

" The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone. "

" I never really expected to be controversial. "

" I'm very pessimistic. "

" Great scientific contributions have been techniques. "

" We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. "

" 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. "

" The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again. "

" Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything. "

" A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment. "

" Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. "

" No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been. "

" The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. "

" If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment. "