B. F. Skinner

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

“I'm very pessimistic.”

“Reinforcement is being right.”

“You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.”

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

“A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.”

“I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.”

“When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.”

“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”

“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.”

“I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.”

“Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful.”

“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.”

“The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.”

“Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.”

“Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?”

“The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.”

“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.”

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

“I never really expected to be controversial.”