A culture must be reasonably stable, but it must also change, and it will presumably be strongest if it can avoid excessive respect for tradition and fear of novelty on the one hand and excessively rapid change on the other. — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was still somewhat bothered by... worried... about religion. I remember going to this professor… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior - verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that… — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years. — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men. — B. F. Skinner Copy Share Image
