Quotes by B. F. Skinner

“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.”

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

“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...”

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

“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.”

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

“Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.”

“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.”

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

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

“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.”

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

“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 m...”

“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.”

“Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.”

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

“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...”

“Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.”

“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.”