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

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

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

" The environment shapes people's actions. "

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

" 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. "

" You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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? "

" Great scientific contributions have been techniques. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I'm very pessimistic. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. "