B. F. Skinner quotes

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

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

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

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
- 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

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

A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.
- B. F. Skinner

No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. ... What does change is our chance of doing something about the subject of a theory. Newton's analysis of the light in a rainbow was a step in the direction of the laser.
- 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

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

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

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

Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say.
- B. F. Skinner