B. F. Skinner Quotes

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B. F. Skinner

Profession : Psychologist

Birth : March 20, 1904

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.

B. F. Skinner

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.

B. F. Skinner

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

B. F. Skinner

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

B. F. Skinner

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

B. F. Skinner

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

B. F. Skinner

I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.

B. F. Skinner

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

B. F. Skinner

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

B. F. Skinner

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

B. F. Skinner