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.

The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called 'conditioning'. In operant conditioning we 'strengthen' an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.

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.

No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. ... What does change is our chance of doing something about the subject of a theory. Newton's analysis of the light in a rainbow was a step in the direction of the laser.

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

Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.

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.

The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior - verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.

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.

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

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

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.

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.

Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.

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

The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.

To say that a man is sinful because he sins is to give an operational definition of sin. To say that he sins because he is sinful is to trace his behavior to a supposed inner trait. But whether or not a person engages in the kind of behavior called sinful depends upon circumstances which are not mentioned in either question. The sin assigned as an inner possession (the sin a person "knows") is to be found in a history of reinforcement.

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.

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.

I've had only one idea in my life - a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible - the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior. In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate. I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, 'Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!

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

The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for. The rest is a day-to-day enjoyment of life. That's the explanation for your Father Divines; people naturally flock to anyone they can trust for the necessities of life... They are the backbone of a community--solid, trust-worthy, essential.

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.