"The verbal community which teaches us to make distinctions among things in the world around us lacks the information it needs to teach us to distinguish events in our private…
"... I am not willing to give introspection much of a toehold ... , for there are two important reasons why we do not discriminate precisely among our feelings and…
"I welcome the view, clearly gaining in favor among psychologists and physiologists and by no means a stranger to philosophy, that what we introspectively observe, as well as feel, are…
"In short, the bodily conditions we feel are collateral products of our genetic and environmental histories. They have no explanatory force; they are simply additional facts to be taken into…
"We both strike and feel angry for a common reason, and that reason lies in the environment." (p. 71)
"Very little biology is handicapped by the fact that the biologist is himself a specimen of the thing he is studying, but that part of the science with which we…
"There will be certain temporal gaps in such an analysis [of behavior in terms of contingencies of reinforcement]. The behavior and the conditions of which it is a function do…
"[We do not] need to consider anatomy and physiology in order to see how the behavior of the individual is changed by his exposure to contingencies of reinforcement during his…
"We know something about the chemical and electrical effects of the nervous system and the location of many of its functions, but the events that actually underlie a single instance…
"I must begin by saying what I take a science of behavior to be. It is, I assume, part of biology. The organism that behaves is the organism that breathes,…
"... nothing less than a vast improvement in our understanding of human behavior will prevent the destruction of our way of life of mankind." (p. 68)
"What is needed is not a new political leader or a new kind of government but further knowledge about human behavior and new ways of applying that knowledge to the…
"The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a…
"The great men who are said to have made a difference in human affairs—Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, the scholars and scientists of the Revival of Learning, the leaders of the Enlightenment,…
"It has been argued that the solution might be socialism, but it has often been pointed out that socialism, like capitalism, is committed to growth, and hence to overconsumption and…
"In America we almost instinctively move to change things by political action: we pass laws, we vote for new leaders. But a good many people are beginning to wonder. They…
"Indeed, it might be argued that if America were to convert to a network of small communities, our economy would be wrecked. But something is wrong when it is the…
"In spite of our lip service to freedom, we do very little to further the development of the individual. How many Americans can say that they are doing the kinds…
"We know how to solve many educational problems with programmed instruction and good contingency management, saving resources and the time and effort of teachers and students. Small communities are ideal…
"We could solve many of the problems of delinquency and crime if we could change the early environments of offenders." (p. 62)
"If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers. It should be easy to…
"In a series of small communities . . . everyone would have a job because work, as well as wages, could be divided among workers. And good incentive conditions—for example,…
"Simply by dividing the total amount of wages Americans receive each year by the number of people who want jobs, we arrive at a perfectly reasonable annual wage for everyone.…
"The basic research has also shown how important it is for everyone, young and old, women and men, not only to receive goods but to engage in their production." (p.…
"In an experimental community contingencies of reinforcement which encourage unnecessary spending can be corrected. As for pollution, small communities are optimal for recycling materials and avoiding wasteful methods of distribution."…
"The experimental analysis of behavior has clearly shown that it is not the quantity of goods that counts (as the law of supply and demand suggests) but the contingent relation…
"If we want to find out how people can live together without quarreling, can produce the goods they need without working too hard, or can raise and educate their children…
"From the very beginning the application of an experimental analysis of behavior was different . . . Behavior could be changed by changing its consequences—that was operant conditioning—but it could…
"Applied psychology is usually a mixture of science and common sense, and Freud regarded therapy as a minor contribution of psychoanalysis." (p. 59)
"In anthropology, sociology, and psychology the preferred formulations are those that do not dictate action. A thoroughgoing developmentalism, for example, almost denies the possibility of effective action." (p. 59)
"In Behavior of Organisms, published seven years earlier [than Walden Two], I had refused to apply my results outside the laboratory. “Let him extrapolate who will,” I had said. But,…
"Men and women have never faced a greater threat to the future of their species. There is much to be done and done quickly, and nothing less than the active…
"The age-old mistake is to look for salvation in the character of autonomous men and women rather than in the social environments that have appeared in the evolution of cultures…
"I would define a humanist as one of those who, because of the environment to which he has been exposed, is concerned for the future of mankind. A movement that…
"The neglect [of the importance of the social environment] has meant that better practices for building self-knowledge and self-management have been missed." (p. 52)
"What distinguishes the human species . . . is the development of a culture, a social environment that contains the contingencies generating self-knowledge and self-control. It is this environment that…
"Do I mean to say that Plato never discovered the mind? Or that Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, and Kant were preoccupied with incidental, often irrelevant byproducts of human behavior. Or that…
"We cannot fill the gap between behavior and the environment of which it is a function through introspection because, to put the matter in crude physiological terms, we do not…
"Knowing requires special contingencies of reinforcement that must be arranged by other people, and the contingencies involving private events are never very precise because other people are not effectively in…
"Each of us possesses a small part of the universe within his own skin. It is not for that reason different from the rest of the universe, but it is…
"An omniscient physiologist should be able to tell us, for example, how a person is changed when a bit of his behavior is reinforced, and what he thus becomes should…
"There are gaps in time and space between behavior and the environmental events to which it is attributed, and it is natural to try to fill them with an account…
"Why does the Ervin Committee not consider constitutional safeguards against the power which a person can amass by accumulating money? We have minimum wage laws and other laws restricting some…
"In retrospect, much of this [behavior modification] often seems to be simply a matter of common sense, but people have had common sense for thousands of years, and it has…
"The “good life” is not a world in which people have what they need; it is one in which the things they need figure as reinforcers in effective contingencies." (p.…
"Like everything else, operant conditioning can be misused." (p. 43)
"The mistake [concerning “rights”] is to generalize from those who cannot help themselves to those who can. For the latter, a much more fundamental right—the right to live in a…
"Behavior modification, properly defined as “the applied analysis of behavior,” is precisely what is needed to correct . . . shortcoming[s] of institutional life, because it is concerned with establishing…
"The term [behavior modification] was introduced . . . to refer to certain applications of the experimental analysis of behavior, particularly through the arrangement of contingencies of positive reinforcement. Behavior…
"[Industrial workers] differ from slaves only in the nature of the “punishment” they receive for not working. They are subject to negative reinforcement, a condition obscured by the uncritical use…