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" Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful. "
B. F. Skinner
Reinforcement
Used
Powerful
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" The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount. "
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" Great scientific contributions have been techniques. "
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Contributions
Been
Scientific
" I never really expected to be controversial. "
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Expected
Controversial
Never
" Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. "
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" 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. "
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" We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. "
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" A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment. "
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Avoid
Way
Punishment
" I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control. "
B. F. Skinner
Totalitarian
Any
Control
" The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years. "
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Think
People
Control
" I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is. "
B. F. Skinner
Up
Decisions
Design
" 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
" I think my novel, 'Walden Two,' has made people stop and look at the culture they have inherited and wonder if it is the last word or whether it can be changed. "
B. F. Skinner
Look
People
Think
" The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry. "
B. F. Skinner
Directing
Act
Being
" 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. "
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Business
Words
People
" I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men. "
B. F. Skinner
I Am
Military
Use
" 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
" The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. "
B. F. Skinner
Will
Abandoned
Environment
" No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been. "
B. F. Skinner
Always
He
Man
" If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down. "
B. F. Skinner
Structure
Society
Rights
" 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? "
B. F. Skinner
Problems
Future
Environment
" 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
" I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it. "
B. F. Skinner
Improve
Get
Religion
" Reinforcement is being right. "
B. F. Skinner
Right
Reinforcement
Being
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Small
Task
Achievement
" 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
" 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
" If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment. "
B. F. Skinner
Age
You
Change
" 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. "
B. F. Skinner
Way
Ideal
Environment
" When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. "
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Study
Interesting
Everything
" I'm very pessimistic. "
B. F. Skinner
Pessimistic
Very