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.

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

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

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

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 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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.