B.F. Skinner Quotes

The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.

Behavior is determined by its consequences.

Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. From the point of view of the whole group there's no gain whatsoever, and perhaps a loss.

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

Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another, and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements

In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of democracy is supposed to be itself a check. But it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled.

Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.

Men build society and society builds men.

The environment shapes people's actions.

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 positive reinforcement
there's no restraint and no revolt. By careful cultural design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave
the motives, desires, the wishes.

Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful.

What is sought can never produce the seeking.

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.

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

small communities

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.

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.

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.

Democracy is the spawn of despotism. And like father, like son. Democracy is power and rule. It's not the will of the people, remember; it's the will of the majority.

Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair
or the height of a battle against boredom.

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.

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.

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.

But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force.

I would have been glad to agree to let them all proceed henceforth in complete ignorance of psychology, if they would forget my opinion of chocolate sodas or the story of the amusing episode on a Spanish streetcar.

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.

You must feel a certain lack of excitement in these accouncements. No garish posters, no bright lights, none of the paraphernalia with which the entertainment industry whips up a jaded public. But in a day or so these simple notices will begin to take on all the excitement of the shimmering marquee. When there are no signs ten feet high, five feet will do. When there are none five feet high, one foot serves well enough. It isn't the color or brightness or size of a poster which makes it exciting. It's the experiences which have accompanied similar posters in the past. The excitement is a conditioned reflex. Our bulletin board is our Great White Way, and we're dazzled by it.

The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.

Not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for. The rest is a day-to-day enjoyment of life. That's the explanation for your Father Divines; people naturally flock to anyone they can trust for the necessities of life ... They are the backbone of a community
solid, trust-worthy, essential.

One may take the line that metaphorical devices are inevitable in the early stages of any science and that although we may look with amusement today upon the "essences," "forces," "phlogistons," and "ethers," of the science of yesterday, these nevertheless were essential to the historical process. It would be difficult to prove or disprove this. However, if we have learned anything about the nature of scientific thinking, if mathematical and logical researches have improved our capacity to represent and analyze empirical data, it is possible that we can avoid some of the mistakes of adolescence. Whether Freud could have done so is past demonstrating, but whether we need similar constructs in the future prosecution of a science of behavior is a question worth considering.

A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.

You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it.

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.

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?

A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.

Severe punishment unquestionably has an immediate effect in reducing a tendency to act in a given way. This result is no doubt responsible for its widespread use. We 'instinctively' attack anyone whose behavior displeases us - perhaps not in physical assault, but with criticism, disapproval, blame, or ridicule. Whether or not there is an inherited tendency to do this, the immediate effect of the practice is reinforcing enough to explain its currency. In the long run, however, punishment does not actually eliminate behavior from a repertoire, and its temporary achievement is obtained at tremendous cost in reducing the over-all efficiency and happiness of the group. (p. 190)

It is a mistake to suppose that all change or development is growth. The present condition of the earth's surface is not mature or immature; the horse has not, so far as we know, reached some final and presumably optimal stage in evolutionary development. If a child's language seems to grow like an embryo, it is only because the environmental contingencies have been neglected. The feral child has no language, not because his isolation has interfered with some growth process, but because he has not been exposed to a verbal community. We have no reason to call any culture mature in the sense that further growth is unlikely or that it would necessarily be a kind of deterioration. We call some cultures underdeveloped or immature in contrast with others we call 'advanced', but it is a crude form of jingoism to imply that any government, religion, or economic system is mature.

The main objection to the metaphor of growth, in considering either the development of an individual or the evolution of a culture, is that it emphasizes a terminal state which does not have a function. We say that an organism grows toward maturity or in order to reach maturity. Maturity becomes a goal, and progress becomes movement towards a goal. A goal is literally a terminus - the end of something such as a foot race. It has no effect on the race except to bring it to an end. The word is used in this relatively empty sense when we say that the goal of life is death or that the goal of evolution

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.

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.

I think my novel, 'Walden Two,' has made people stop and look at the culture they have inherited and wonder if it is the last word or whether it can be changed.

I never really expected to be controversial.

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.

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.

The final state of affairs may not have been foreseen. Perhaps we are merely reading a plan into the world after the fact.

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills.

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

I've had only one idea in my life - a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible - the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior. In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate. I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, 'Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!

A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.

Behavior used to be reinforced by great deprivation; if people weren't hungry, they wouldn't work. Now we are committed to feeding people whether they work or not. Nor is money as great a reinforcer as it once was. People no longer work for punitive reasons, yet our culture offers no new satisfactions.

If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.

The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion ... [a man] may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.

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.

The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.

Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?

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.

No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.

Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.

The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.

The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.

A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.

To say that ... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

Compare two people, one of whom has been crippled by an accident, the other by an early environmental history which makes him lazy and, when criticized, mean. Both cause great inconvenience to others, but one dies a martyr, the other a scoundrel.

The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.

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?

Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. 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.

A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.

Great scientific contributions have been techniques.

The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.

The rat is always right.

The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.

An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know.

In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can't buy love with gifts or favors, you can't hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can't be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.

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.

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.

I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.

The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'

The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the "mutations" of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly.

Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent.

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.

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty
or, it may be, war and want
but we must vote for a man.