Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done… - B. F. Skinner

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated — but not in politics... We have no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That's the tragedy of a political reformer.

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.

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.