Operant Quotes

#1. 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

#2. The Grace of God and the human will are co-operant, but not on equal terms. Grace has the pre-eminence.

William Burton Pope

#3. We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.

B.F. Skinner

#4. Operant conditioning is not confined to deliberate training; it is one way that cats learn how to deal with whatever surroundings they find themselves in. Cats have not (yet) evolved to live in apartments; their instinctive behavior is still tuned to hunting in the open air.

John Bradshaw

#5. 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.

B.F. Skinner

#6. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

Edmund Burke

#7. Scars are good. Right, Helmud? It's the body's way of making armour.

Julianna Baggott

#8. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one "would" have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of things.

Henry James

#9. Dear Sweetheart, Without you my days are endless. Days seem like weeks ... Weeks feel like months ... Months like years ... Years like centuries ... Centuries like ... You get the idea.

Charles M. Schulz

#10. A poor way to repay them - gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks.

J.K. Rowling