B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner, commonly known as B. F. Skinner, was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth20 March 1904
CitySusquehana Depot, PA
CountryUnited States of America
punishment people threat
Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
education men genius
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.
real men thinking
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
men years doe
The speaker does not feel the grammatical rules he is said to apply in composing sentences, and men spoke grammatically for thousands of years before anyone knew there were rules.
variables way different
To say that... behaviors have different 'meanings' is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
school moon men
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
father responsibility people
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.
real science technology
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
teacher teaching tasks
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.
war believe men
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.
education world impossible
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.
believe dying not-afraid
I don't believe in God, so I'm not afraid of dying.
education skins important
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
reinforcement facts behavior
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.