A biography for B. F. Skinnerhasn’t been written yet.
“The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.”
“Behavior used to be reinforced by great deprivation; if people weren't hungry, they wouldn't work. Now we are committed to feeding people whether they work or not. Nor is money as great a reinforcer as it once was. People no longer work for punitive reasons, yet our culture offers no new satisfactions.”
“What is sought can never produce the seeking.”
“I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it.”
“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.”
“Great scientific contributions have been techniques.”
“I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They're not creating it; they're not initiating anything. It's all found somewhere else. That's an awful lot to relinquish.”
“The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.”
“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”
“No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.”
“I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills.”
“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”
“I don't think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.”
“We have not yet seen what man can make of man.”
“I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.”
“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.”
“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”
“Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people's daily lives with a sense of achievement.”
“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.”
“The environment shapes people's actions.”