Top 100 Quotes About Skinner
#1. Some people perceive Skinner to be complex. I just basically was trying to remember my lines, so I guess that's what they perceive as being complexity.
Mitch Pileggi
#2. On reflection, I was pleased that I would get the opportunity to keep my pledge to the Skinner brothers, but I slept uneasily that night. I realised that my career as an intelligencer was not over. On the contrary. It had only just begun.
D.W. Bradbridge
#3. I did 'The Frank Skinner Show,' and they gave me a little jukebox-shaped CD player, which looks nice in the kitchen.
Robert Webb
#4. I saw stars like Helen Hayes, Maurice Evans, Tallulah Bankhead and Cornelia Otis Skinner. It was enchanting. I knew that was the world I wanted to be in.
Sada Thompson
#5. Carrot-and-stick reinforcement' the behaviorists are telling us is needed for this bird to carry out these operations, thirteen different types of construction jobs? B. F. Skinner did a very good thing: in World War
William Peter Blatty
#6. The first thing people say to me when they meet me is, 'You're so much skinner in person.' You have to live up to these standards that are so unrealistic. I try to tune it out.
Gail Simmons
#7. The only problem with Mitch [Pileggi, the actor who plays Skinner] is that his bald head means there's nothing to hold onto when he starts to buck.
David Duchovny
#8. As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner's laboratory.
Andrew Weil
#9. There must be something unique about man because otherwise, evidently, the ducks would be lecturing about Konrad Lorenz, and the rats would be writing papers about B. F. Skinner.
Jacob Bronowski
#10. Skinner proposed that the environment had a much greater effect on the individual than previously thought. In particular, he proposed that to improve human race we need focus on creating better environments, rather than better people. Because good environments will conduce to good people.
Jose Berengueres
#11. She's lovely and she's with Skinner, and they're probably in love and there's no justice in this world
Irvine Welsh
#12. Anthony Skinner has a fire in his heart to worship God, and to encourage and equip others to do the same.
Matt Redman
#13. Skinner's suits were a constant source of fascination to Robert. They seemed to be made from an alien synthetic fibre that never creased or got dirty. Indeed, it seemed possible that Skinner himself was constructed of the same material.
Christopher Fowler
#14. Question: If you put a psychologist in a room with a man who thinks he's Napoleon and leave them there for a year (or ten or twenty), will you end up with two Skinner men or two guys with their hands in their shirts? Answer: Insufficient data.
Stephen King
#15. See, that why I ain't go to church. Figger I got me a church wherever I be. Want'a talk to God, well I say, 'howdy-howdy, God,' and we jaw fer a bit.' - Jimmy 'Diamond' Skinner
David Baldacci
#16. People say, "Now you've given up booze at least you can remember what you did last night." I say, "Yeah, nothing." - Frank Skinner
Jimmy Carr
#17. Diamond Skinner had had no material possessions to his name and yet had been the happiest creature Lou had ever met. He and God would no doubt get along famously.
David Baldacci
#18. It's like the little rat in the Skinner box who says, "I've got this psychologist under my control. Every time I press the bar, he gives me a food pellet."
Jess Lair
#19. To say that ... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B.F. Skinner
#20. Like the rest of the house, it was beautifully appointed with shiny European wallpaper, lavender-scented soap and an oil painting over the toilet. Geoff
Dan Skinner
#21. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#22. Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
B.F. Skinner
#23. Going out of style isn't a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year's dress in order to make it worthless.
B.F. Skinner
#24. Emily and I have now reached the time in life when not only do we lie about our ages, we forget what we've said they are.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
#25. No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
B.F. Skinner
#26. To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
B.F. Skinner
#27. It's as though some poor devil were to set out for a large dinner party with the knowledge that the following morning he would be hearing exactly what each of the other guests thought of him.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
#29. That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
B.F. Skinner
#30. At the top, he dipped the tip of his tongue in and tasted Caleb's essence. Delicious. Another jewel-like drop appeared, as if by magic. Matt stole it as well.
Dan Skinner
#31. Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.
B.F. Skinner
#32. The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
B.F. Skinner
#33. Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
B.F. Skinner
#34. At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
B.F. Skinner
#36. How did he close off that part of his brain that tells someone they've harmed another soul?...Most frighteningly of all, are some of us born with no conscience at all?
Dan Skinner
#37. Cain glared at the spot his bullet could take to blow both their heads off. He opened and closed his hand, tempted. So very tempted.
Tricia Skinner
#38. What is sought can never produce the seeking.
B.F. Skinner
#39. If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that's necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
B.F. Skinner
#40. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#41. Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair
or the height of a battle against boredom.
B.F. Skinner
#42. Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
#43. A dog is not intelligent. Never trust an animal that's surprised by it's own farts
Frank Skinner
#44. It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
#45. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.
B.F. Skinner
#46. I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them.
B.F. Skinner
#47. His focus had been so narrow that the world became a mirrored reflection of his attitude - as
Dan Skinner
#48. I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
B.F. Skinner
#49. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#50. He knew for the first time ever that someone existed who actually cared for him.
Dan Skinner
#51. A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
B.F. Skinner
#52. Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
B.F. Skinner
#53. Freedom is an illusion, but a valuable one.
Skinner
#54. Behavior is determined by its consequences.
B.F. Skinner
#55. Love does not make cowards. It creates heroes.
Dan Skinner
#56. Professional footballers - those virile young stags of our modern culture - are near perpetual fountains of sputum.
Frank Skinner
#57. The one fact that I would cry form every housetop is this: the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now.
B.F. Skinner
#58. I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.
B.F. Skinner
#60. Courtesy is fine and heaven knows we need more and more of it in a rude and frenetic world, but mechanized courtesy is as pallid as Pablum ... in fact, it isn't even courtesy.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
#61. The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
B.F. Skinner
#62. Why do we cry when we're happy?" I asked. "It's one of those things. I don't think it makes us less one way, or more the other. I think it just is. I don't think emotions have a gender preference.
Dan Skinner
#63. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#64. I sensed more than recognized the sound of those skeletal knuckles on the door. I was too young for it to be Death, so it had to be his mother.
Dan Skinner
#65. You can spend your whole life trying to be popular, but at the end of the day, the size of the crowd at your funeral will be largely dictated by the weather.
Frank Skinner
#66. I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
B.F. Skinner
#67. Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say.
B.F. Skinner
#68. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#69. Once a fear has been faced, whether the battle is won or lost, the soul becomes cleansed.
Dan Skinner
#70. 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
#71. The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior - verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
B.F. Skinner
#72. Cider was my drink because I liked the taste and it made me stupid.
Frank Skinner
#74. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#75. We'll climb with you and steal your women.
Todd Skinner
#76. So, Arsenal have signed Arsene Wenger because his name sounds a bit like the club. How long before Man Utd sign Stefan Kuntz?
Frank Skinner
#77. 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
#78. Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
B.F. Skinner
#79. Amazing how a confluence of praise and lust can just make your defensive barriers collapse like Jell-O on a hot stove
Dan Skinner
#80. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#81. Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
B.F. Skinner
#82. I wanted to explain so much to him at that moment, but you can't give a six-year-old the perspective of a 40-year-old, not really, so I gave him the short course.
David Skinner
#83. Nature doesn't tell you what's wrong. It only let's you know what's right.
Dan Skinner
#84. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#85. When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
B.F. Skinner
#86. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#87. Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
B.F. Skinner
#88. 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.
B.F. Skinner
#89. If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.
B.F. Skinner
#90. The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.
B.F. Skinner
#91. Some say crying purges. I say it drains. There's a difference. One takes the bad things from you to help close a space. The other opens you and leaves you empty
Dan Skinner
#92. There's no doubt that Dick and I were in a relationship. It was one completely contrary to anything one would consider normal.
Dan Skinner
#93. The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B.F. Skinner
#94. I never really expected to be controversial.
B.F. Skinner
#95. 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
#96. We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'
B.F. Skinner
#97. We're always hearing about risk-takers whose risks paid off, but they are no braver than those whose risks end in ridicule.
Frank Skinner
#98. The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B.F. Skinner
#100. The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
B.F. Skinner
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