B.F. Skinner Quotes

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.

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

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

The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.

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

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences

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

It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on.

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

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.

Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.

A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.

A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.

It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.

At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.

An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.

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

I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them.

At its best, climbing becomes a life focus around which everything else must orbit and at its least is an excellent diversion from the real world.

Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.

A dog is not intelligent. Never trust an animal that's surprised by it's own farts

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

Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.

The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.

The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.

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

Cider was my drink because I liked the taste and it made me stupid.

The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

You can spend your whole life trying to be popular, but at the end of the day, the size of the crowd at your funeral will be largely dictated by the weather.

I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.

I solemnly swear that I will bear true and faithful allegiance to the Queen when she pays her income tax.

The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.

A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.

When posh boys get into trouble they sack the servants.

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

Men build society and society builds men.

It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.

Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.

I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.