The Consequences of an Act Affect the Probability of Its Occurring Again.

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"Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code -- a lawmaking which would guarantee the success of a customs or land. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the easily of the wrong people--or, rather, in that location aren't whatsoever right people."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Ii

"Astringent punishment unquestionably has an immediate effect in reducing a tendency to act in a given manner. This issue is no uncertainty responsible for its widespread use. We 'instinctively' attack anyone whose behavior displeases us - perhaps not in concrete assault, but with criticism, disapproval, blame, or ridicule. Whether or not there is an inherited trend to exercise this, the firsthand effect of the practice is reinforcing enough to explain its currency. In the long run, nonetheless, penalty 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 grouping. (p. 190)"
― B.F. Skinner, Scientific discipline and Homo Behavior

"Whatsoever single historical upshot is as well circuitous to be adequately known by anyone. It transcends all the intellectual capacities of men. Our exercise is to look until a sufficient number of details have been forgotten. Of course things seem simpler and so! Our memories piece of work that style; we retain the facts which are easiest to think about."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again."
― B.F. Skinner

"The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of centre than with singleness of opportunity."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The most constructive alternative process [to penalisation] is probably extinction. This takes time only is much more than rapid than allowing the response to exist forgotten. The technique seems to be relatively free of objectionable by-products. We recommend it, for example when we suggest that a parent 'pay no attention' to objectionable behavior on the part of his child. If the child'due south behavior is strong only because it has been reinforced by 'getting a ascent out of' the parent, it will disappear when this consequence is no longer forthcoming. (p. 192)"
― B.F. Skinner, Science and Man Beliefs

"Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair--or the height of a battle against colorlessness."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Fame is also won at the expense of others. Fifty-fifty the well-deserved honors of the scientist or homo of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who go none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. From the bespeak of view of the whole group in that location's no gain any, and maybe a loss."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Ii

"It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The outcome is to improve the way in which he is controlled."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Ii

"The severest trial of oppression is the abiding outrage which ane suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practise the opposite emotion... [a man] may not get his liberty or possessions back, simply he's less miserable. It'due south a difficult lesson."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Why did colleges brand their students accept examinations, and why did they give grade? What did a grade really mean? When a student "studied" did he practise anything more than than read and think-- or was there something special which no one in Walden Ii would know about? Why did the professors lecture to the students? Were the students never expected to do anything except reply questions? Was it truthful that students were made to read books they were not interested in?"
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"In a world of complete economic equality, you lot go and keep the angel you deserve. You can't buy love with gifts or favors, you lot can't concord love past raising an inadequate child, and y'all can't exist secure in love past serving as a proficient scrub woman or a practiced provider."
― B.F. Skinner

"Freedom is an illusion, merely a valuable i."
― B.F Skinner

"The world's a poor standard. any lodge which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Your liberals and radicals all desire to govern. They want to effort information technology their way-- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different fashion or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they e'er tried information technology? No, it's only their guess."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Ii

"The apprentice doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an skilful in government and wants to have a say."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself also as whatever other part of his globe. Today he is the thing he understands to the lowest degree. Physics and biology have come a long way, but in that location has been no comparable development of annihilation like a science of human behavior. Greek physics and biological science are at present of historical interest only (no modern physicist or biologist would turn to Aristotle for help), but the dialogues of Plato are still assigned to students and cited equally if they threw calorie-free on human behavior. Aristotle could not have understood a page of mod physics or biology, but Socrates and his friends would have little trouble in post-obit near current discussions of human diplomacy. And as to engineering science, we have made immense strides in controlling the physical and biological worlds, but our practices in authorities, instruction, and much of economic science, though adapted to very dissimilar atmospheric condition, have not greatly improved. We can scarcely explicate this by saying that the Greeks knew all at that place was to know almost human behavior. Certainly they knew more they knew virtually the physical world, but information technology was still not much. Moreover, their manner of thinking nigh man beliefs must have had some fatal flaw. Whereas Greek physics and biological science, no affair how crude, led eventually to modern science, Greek theories of human being behavior led nowhere. If they are with us today, it is non considering they possessed some kind of eternal verity, but because they did not contain the seeds of anything better."
― B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

"In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of republic is supposed to be itself a check. Just it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The rat is always right."
― BF Skinner

"Once in a while a new government initiates a plan to put power to better utilise, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated-- but not in politics... We accept no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That's the tragedy of a political reformer."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Nosotros can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more than scrupulously than was always the case under the old organisation, nevertheless feel gratis. 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'southward no restraint and no defection. By careful cultural design, we control not the final behavior, just the inclination to behave-- the motives, desires, the wishes."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The hero is a device which the historian has taken over from the layman. He uses information technology because he has no scientific vocabulary or technique for dealing with the real facts of history-- the opinions, emotions, attitudes; the wishes, plans, schemes; the habits of men. He can't talk about them then he talks almost heroes."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The concluding land of affairs may not have been foreseen. Peradventure we are merely reading a plan into the globe after the fact."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden 2

"In a pre-scientific society the best the mutual man can do is pin his faith on a leader and requite him his back up, trusting in his benignancy confronting the misuse of the delegated power and in his wisdom to govern justly and make war successfully."
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Ii

"The consequences of behavior decide the probability that the beliefs volition occur again"
― B.F. Skinner

"Compare two people, ane of whom has been crippled by an accident, the other by an early ecology history which makes him lazy and, when criticized, mean. Both cause great inconvenience to others, only one dies a martyr, the other a scoundrel."
― B.F. Skinner, About Behaviorism

"I would have been glad to concord to let them all continue henceforth in complete ignorance of psychology, if they would forget my stance of chocolate sodas or the story of the amusing episode on a Castilian streetcar."
― B. F. Skinner

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Walden Two
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Beyond Freedom and Nobility
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Nigh Behaviorism
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