Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

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.

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.

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.

Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

Hungry for what? Money? No. Power? Over people? That was like having power over clams.

Analysis does not transform consciousness.

Depriving our communities of libraries will deprive our society of its ability to survive. - Neil Gaiman

I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.

Americans really don't understand the Japanese nature, but it's not an easy thing to understand.

In international or national crises, there are always questions of lack of confidence. You have to change the minds of the people in order to get results.

I don't think there's any way you can worry about how many errors or how many bad plays you've made. You can get into a fielding funk just as quick as you can hitting.

The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful.

Mozart resolved his emotions on a level that transformed them into moods uncontaminated by mortal anguish, enabling him to express the angelic anguish that is so peculiarly his own.