B.F. Skinner

Psychologist

1904-03-20 – 1990-08-18

B. F. Skinner was an American psychologist and behaviorist known for developing operant conditioning and influential theories of learning. His work shaped modern psychology, education, and behavioral science.

Quotes by B.F. Skinner

Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code -- a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people--or, rather, there aren't any right people.
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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.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They're not creating it; they're not initiating anything. It's all found somewhere else. That's an awful lot to relinquish.
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What is sought can never produce the seeking.
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Religions work for their own aggrandizement - strengthen the church and so on - and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.
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I don't think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.
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If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.
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When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.
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The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?
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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.
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Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people's daily lives with a sense of achievement.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was still somewhat bothered by... worried... about religion. I remember going to this professor of philosophy and telling him that I had lost my faith.
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The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
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The simulated approval and affection with which parents and teachers are often urged to solve behavior problems are counterfeit. So are flattery, backslap-ping, and many other ways of winning friends.
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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word admire then means marvel at.
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