Skinner’s Quote of the Day

From the point of view of an experimental analysis of behavior, [the concept of “happiness”] appears to be merely an awkward way of representing the roles of positive and negative…

If the community has solved the essential problems of daily life, it may leave each member free to do as he pleases. But he is free only to come under…

Current systems of rewards are largely aversive, the threatened loss of a standard of living being more important than the receipt of wages. (p. 63)

It is a basic principle that behavior which is followed by certain kinds of consequences is more likely to occur again, but reinforcements may be contingent on behavior in many…

A community may need as much power to reward as to punish, but it is not said to be using force because its operations are not resisted. (p. 62)

Reward refers very loosely to the “positive reinforcers” which have been extensively analyzed in laboratory research. (p. 62)

Extensive use of punishment will cost a community some of its members. It may also lead to counterattack—as in revolution or religious reformation—or to stubborn resistance to all forms of…

The principles derived from an experimental analysis of behavior offer the designer [of an experimental community] considerable help in setting up an environment under which behavior which will contribute to…

A special branch of psychology has now reached the point at which promising technological applications are becoming feasible. (p. 61)

The hard fact is that the culture which most readily acknowledges the validity of a scientific analysis is most likely to be successful in the competition between cultures which, whether…

If we must have something to admire, let it be man’s willingness to discard a flattering portrait of himself in favor of a more accurate and hence more useful picture.…

Science leads us to see man in a different light, but he is nevertheless the same man we once saw in another light. (p. 57)

Men control themselves by controlling the world in which they live. They do this as much when they exercise self-control, as when they make changes in their culture which alter…

Science and technology are concerned with changing the world in which men live, and changes are made precisely because of their effect on human behavior. (p. 56)

In turning to external and manipulable variables, a scientific analysis moves away from supposed inner activities which we have tried to reach through admiration. (p. 56)

We shall no longer admire wrestling with the devil, if it turns out that the devil is simply a slight disturbance in the hypothalamus which can be allayed by a…

Admiration is a social practice used to eke out defective control. (p. 55)

When we regard a criminal as in need of treatment rather than punishment, . . . we deprive him of “the human attribute of responsibility.” (p. 54)

There are many advantages in arranging matters so that the pupil does what he wants to do, but he must be carefully prepared to want to do those things which…

Yet, the individual is at best a locus in which many lines of development come together in a unique set. His individuality is unquestioned. (p. 209)

Man himself may be controlled by his environment, but it is an environment which is almost wholly of his own making. The physical environment of most people is largely man-made.…

Science does not dehumanize man, it de-homunculizes him, and it must do so if it is to prevent the abolition of the human species. (p. 200)

In shifting control from autonomous man to the ob­servable environment we do not leave an empty organism. A great deal goes on inside the skin, and physiology will eventually tell…

Without the help of a verbal community all behavior would be unconscious. Consciousness is a social product. (p. 192)

It would be foolish to deny the existence of that private world, but it is also foolish to assert that be­cause it is private it is of a different nature…

Abstract thinking is the product of a particular kind of environ­ment, not of a cognitive faculty. (p. 189)

We must know how the environment works before we can change it to change behavior. A mere shift in emphasis from man to environment means very little. (p. 185)

As a science of behavior adopts the strategy of physics and biology, the autonomous agent to which behavior has traditionally been attributed is replaced by the environ­ment . . .…

[The scientist’s] apparatus exerts a conspicuous control on the pigeon, but we must not overlook the control ex­erted by the pigeon. (p. 169)

To prevent the misuse of controlling power, . . . we must look not at the controller himself but at the contingencies under which he engages in control. (p. 168)

There are, of course, good reasons why the control of hu­man behavior is resisted. The commonest techniques are aversive, and some sort of countercontrol is to be expected. (p. 167)

The problem is to design a world which will be liked not by people as they now are but by those who live in it. (p. 164)

The important thing is not so much to know how to solve a problem as to know how to look for a solution. (pp. 160-161)

A science of behavior is not yet ready to solve all our problems, but it is a science in progress, . . . the analysis continues to develop and is…

The ease with which mentalistic explanations can be invented on the spot is perhaps the best gauge of how little attention we should pay to them. (p. 160)

An analysis of behavior naturally begins with simple organisms behav­ing in simple ways in simple settings . . . We move forward only as rapidly as our successes permit, and…

Perhaps we cannot now design a successful culture as a whole, but we can design better practices in a piecemeal fashion. (p. 156

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. (p. 156)

In an experi­ment we are interested in what happens, in designing a culture, in whether it will work. This is the difference between science and technology. (p. 153)

. . . if [an observer] cannot understand what he sees in a simplified laboratory environ­ment, how can we expect him to make sense of what is happening in daily…

Nothing less than an experimental analysis was needed to discover the significance of contingencies of reinforcement, and contingencies remain almost out of reach of casual observation. (pp. 148-149)

The task of the cultural designer is to accelerate the development of practices which bring the remote conse­quences of behavior into play. (p. 143)

. . . change occurs not because of the passage of time, but because of what hap­pens while time is passing. (p. 137)

"Why should I be concerned about the survival of a particular kind of eco­nomic system?" The only honest answer to that kind of question seems to be this: "There is…

Heaven is portrayed as a collection of positive reinforcers and hell as a collection of negative, although they are contingent upon behavior executed before death. (p. 136)

Both species and cultures "compete" first of all with the physical environment. (p. 133)

The parallel between biological and cultural evolution breaks down at the point of transmission. (p. 130

A culture, like a species, is selected by its adaptation to an environment: to the extent that it helps its members to get what they need and avoid what is…

A technology of behavior is available which would more successfully reduce the aversive consequences of be­havior, proximate or deferred, and maximize the achieve­ments of which the human organism is capable,…

A man who has been alone since birth will have no verbal behavior, will not be aware of himself as a person, will possess no techniques of self-management, and with…