B.F. Skinner Quotes
Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another, and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements
... I have always fallen for ads. The sweetheart of J. Walter Thompson, I have a peasant-like belief in whatever miracle they profess to effect.
Tragedy can break the heart but not the dam of the tearducts while schmaltz can dissolve the most hardened sophisticate.
That amenity which the French have developed into a great art . . . conversation.
Courtesy is fine and heaven knows we need more and more of it in a rude and frenetic world, but mechanized courtesy is as pallid as Pablum ... in fact, it isn't even courtesy.
All I have learned about horses is that they are beautiful overrated creatures and are all born quite insane.
It's as though some poor devil were to set out for a large dinner party with the knowledge that the following morning he would be hearing exactly what each of the other guests thought of him.
If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.
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.
Led Zep played with light and shade, ear-splitting noise and echoing quiet. They could do it all.
I sensed more than recognized the sound of those skeletal knuckles on the door. I was too young for it to be Death, so it had to be his mother.
I wanted to explain so much to him at that moment, but you can't give a six-year-old the perspective of a 40-year-old, not really, so I gave him the short course.
The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of heart than with singleness of opportunity.
Amazing how a confluence of praise and lust can just make your defensive barriers collapse like Jell-O on a hot stove
How did he close off that part of his brain that tells someone they've harmed another soul?...Most frighteningly of all, are some of us born with no conscience at all?
I was now privy to how a calm, average, peace-loving individual can suddenly get infected with a special kind of crazy. Higher reasoning is replaced with killer animal instincts.
The opposite of a coward is one who knows and does the right thing at the right time even if it may cost them their own life.
Some say crying purges. I say it drains. There’s a difference. One takes the bad things from you to help close a space. The other opens you and leaves you empty
Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair--or the height of a battle against boredom.