B. F. Skinner Quotes
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a well-known psychologist who was the first to develop his field, behaviorism within psychology. He completed his studies at the world-renowned Harvard University. He was intrigued by how birds behave, and invented an apparatus known as the "Skinner Box".. This apparatus helped him understand how animals behave in the natural habitat. He recorded what he observed in a book called "The behavior of Organisms'. After completing his studies from Harvard He became an instructor of psychology at the University of Minnesota to further serve for a short time as chairperson of the department of psychology of Indiana University. He also developed a technology that helped him teach more students. He also wrote a book titled "The Technology of Teaching". He also wrote a number of books on his theories about behavior such as 'About Behaviorism'. He was awarded the gold medal as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Psychology Association'. We offer you a wealth of quotes taken from his lectures, work and books as well as his writings. Skinner's quotations are extremely thought-provoking and thought-provoking. Check out this collection of some of the most well-known quotations 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." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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
"Behavior is determined by its consequences." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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
"The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences" ~ B. F. Skinner
"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." ~ B. F. Skinner
"The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount." ~ B. F. Skinner
"We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression." ~ B. F. Skinner
"That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior." ~ B. F. Skinner
"The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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
"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
"What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes." ~ B. F. Skinner
"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." ~ B. F. Skinner
"An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about." ~ B. F. Skinner
"It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds." ~ B. F. Skinner
"I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them." ~ B. F. Skinner
"The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching." ~ B. F. Skinner
"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading." ~ B. F. Skinner
"The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior - verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way." ~ B. F. Skinner
"A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless." ~ B. F. Skinner
"A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions." ~ B. F. Skinner
"No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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
"At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved." ~ B. F. Skinner
"If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom." ~ B. F. Skinner
"To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?" ~ B. F. Skinner
"If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment." ~ B. F. Skinner
"A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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." ~ B. F. Skinner
"The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion." ~ B. F. Skinner
"Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go." ~ B. F. Skinner
"When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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
"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
"Men build society and society builds men." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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." ~ B. F. Skinner
"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." ~ B. F. Skinner
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