B.F. Skinner Quotes

Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.

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.

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.

To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.

Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.

Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.

I honestly thought my marriage would work because me and the wife did share a sense of humour. We had to really, because she didn't have one.

We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we must elevate ourselves.

Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.

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

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'

So, Arsenal have signed Arsene Wenger because his name sounds a bit like the club. How long before Man Utd sign Stefan Kuntz?

Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.

A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.

But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.

To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.

A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.

We all have our little illusions about our own mental abilities.

The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.

How do I relax? This might sound slightly ridiculous but I play the ukulele for at least an hour a day and I find something really blissful about it.

A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.

A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.

mosquitoes were using my ankles as filling stations.

There are compensations for growing older. One is the realization that to be sporting isn't at all necessary. It is a great relief to reach this stage of wisdom.

We're always hearing about risk-takers whose risks paid off, but they are no braver than those whose risks end in ridicule.

The climbing and soloing aren't worth dying for, but they are worth risking dying for.

When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.

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

Going out of style isn't a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year's dress in order to make it worthless.

If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.

We have not yet seen what man can make of man.

The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.

The reason for the scaffolding on the tower of Saint Germain-des-Près is that a rich American has purchased it and is having it crated for shipping.

Professional footballers - those virile young stags of our modern culture - are near perpetual fountains of sputum.

One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own confusions.

You know your life is over when you own a lawnmower.

We'll climb with you and steal your women.

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

Overcrowding can be corrected only by inducing people not to crowd, and the environment will continue to deteriorate until polluting practices are abandoned.

...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.

Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.

Emily and I have now reached the time in life when not only do we lie about our ages, we forget what we've said they are.

The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background.