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B. F. Skinner
17 quotes
“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Walden Two (1948), p. 95
“Man's power appears to have increased out of all proportion to his wisdom. He has never been in a better position to build a healthy, happy, and productive world; yet things have perhaps never seemed so black.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science and Human Behavior (1953)
“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.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science and Human Behavior (1953)
“Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Freedom and the control of men (1955/1956) American Scholar, 25 (1), 47-65
“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New methods and new aims in teaching", in New Scientist, 22(392) (21 May 1964), pp.483-4
“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.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in B. F. Skinner : The Man and His Ideas (1968) by Richard Isadore Evans, p. 73
“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969)
“Ethical control may survive in small groups, but the control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists—to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), p. 155
“We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word "admire" then means "marvel at.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
“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.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
“It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I have been misunderstood" An interview with B.F.Skinner, Center Magazine (March/April 1972), pp. 63
“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. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious. It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)
“I do not admire myself as a person. My successes do not override my shortcomings.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal of Humanistic Psychology (Spring 1991) Vol. 31 No. 2, p. 112
“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993) by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, p. 5
“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.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Performance-based Assessment for Middle and High School Physical Education (2002) by Jacalyn Lea Lund and Mary Fortman Kirk, p. 165
“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.”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Unpacking the Skinner Box : Revisiting B. F. Skinner through a Postformal Lens" by Dana Salter in The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology Vol. 4 (2008) edited by Joe L. Kincheloe and Raymond A. Ho…
“In trying to solve the terrifying problems that face us in the world today, we naturally turn to the things we do best. We play from strength, and our strength is science and technology. To contain a population explosion, we look for better methods of birth control. Threatened by a nuclear holocaust, we build bigger deterrent forces and anti-ballistic missile systems. We try to stave off world famine with new foods and better ways of growing them. Improved sanitation and medicine will, we hope, control disease; better housing and transportation will solve the problems of the ghettos, and new ways of reducing or disposing of waste will stop the pollution of the environment. We can point to remarkable achievements in all these fields, and it is not surprising that we should try to extend them. But things grow steadily worse, and it is disheartening to find that technology itself is increasingly at fault. Sanitation and medicine have made the problems of population more acute, war has acquired a new horror with the invention of nuclear weapons, and the affluent pursuit of happiness is largely responsible for pollution. As Darlington has said, ‘Every new source from which man has increased his power on the earth has been used to diminish the prospects of his successors. All his progress has been at the expense of damage to his environment which he cannot repair and could not foresee.’”
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), Chapter 1: "A Technology of Behaviour".