B. F. Skinner Quotes

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way — to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.

"Why did colleges make their students take examinations, and why did they give grade? What did a grade really mean? When a student "studied" did he do anything more than read and think — or was there something special which no one in Walden Two would know about? Why did the professors lecture to the students? Were the students never expected to do anything except answer questions? Was it true that students were made to read books they were not interested in?"

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.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Any single historical event is too complex to be adequately known by anyone. It transcends all the intellectual capacities of men. Our practice is to wait until a sufficient number of details have been forgotten. Of course things seem simpler then! Our memories work that way; we retain the facts which are easiest to think about.

The hero is a device which the historian has taken over from the layman. He uses it because he has no scientific vocabulary or technique for dealing with the real facts of history — the opinions, emotions, attitudes; the wishes, plans, schemes; the habits of men. He can't talk about them so he talks about heroes.

Promising paradise or threatening hell-fire is, we assumed, generally admitted to be unproductive. It is based upon a fundamental fraud which, when discovered, turns the individual against society and nourishes the very thing it tries to stamp out. What Jesus offered in return of loving one's enemies was heaven on earth, better known as peace of mind.

Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn't, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That's the source of the tremendous power of reinforcement - there's no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave - the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.

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.

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

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.

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.

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.

The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background.

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.