Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Although Western democracy created the conditions responsible for the rise of modern science, it is now evident that it may never fully profit from that achievement. (p. 3)

The B. F. Skinner Foundation wishes you happy, healthy, and productive 2021! Skinner's Quote of the Day will return in January.

I think the experimental analysis of behavior can best proceed as it started, until the control of the behavior of an organism in an experimental space is very nearly total.…

It is unlikely that a remote consequence of any kind can reinforce operant behavior in the absence of mediating events. (p. 200)

Choice is something to be explained, not to be used in the analysis of basic processes. (p. 199)

To return to choice and especially to regard a single response as a choice between responding and not responding are, I think, steps backward. (p. 199)

When W.H. Heron and I built our twenty-four-box Behemoth, I wrote to Tolman that we had put in two levers and hoped to get around soon to some problems involving…

The contrived contingencies of both education and therapy must eventually be terminated. Teacher or therapist must withdraw from the life of the student or client before teaching or therapy can…

In general, by allowing natural contingencies to take control whenever possible we generate behavior that is more likely to be appropriate to any occasion upon which it may occur again,…

As friends, lovers, and acquaintances we modify the behavior of each other. The only thing that is new is the better understanding of how we do so derived from an…

The experimental analysis of behavior is alive and well. Psychology needs it. (p. 172)

So-called objections to operant theory need not detain us. There is work to be done. (p. 171)

Pavlov’s dog is said to have associated the bell and the food, but as I have pointed out, it was Pavlov who associated them, that is, who put them together…

Another source of misunderstanding of the relation between operant conditioning and natural selection is the strong inclination to look inside a system to see what makes it tick. Those who…

Several writers have recently implied that organisms may have been sensitive to an increase in the mere probability of reinforcement when no reinforcer is immediately contingent upon a response. I…

Organisms differ from physical things because they show selection by consequences. (p. 165)

I see no reason why there should not be a drift toward phylogenic behavior [in experiments on superstition]. It would be something like the Breland Effect unopposed by operant contingencies.…

I am quite sure of my original observation [of “superstition in the pigeon”]. I have repeated it many times, often as a surefire lecture demonstration. Deliver food every twenty seconds…

The effect of an accidentally contingent reinforcer offers some of the best evidence of the power of operant conditioning, and possibly for that reason it has been challenged—as, for example,…

When Keller Breland first told the Harvard “Pigeon Staff” about [the “Breland Effect”] in 1960, we were impressed. Contrary to certain claims, we were far from ‘disturbed.’ (p. 163)

The experimental analysis of behavior . . . is steadily building upon its past and proceeding in a reasonably ordered way to embrace more and more of what people are…

Psychology as a science is, in fact, in shambles. (p. 160)

If you are still struggling to be successful, flattery will more often than not put you on the wrong track by reinforcing useless behavior. (p. 157

If you have been very successful, the most sententious stupidities will be received as pearls of wisdom, and your standards will instantly fall. (p. 157)

... those who thoughtlessly help those who can help themselves work a sinister kind of destruction by making the good things in life no longer properly contingent on behavior. (p.…

In searching for an audience, beware of those who are trying to be helpful and too readily flatter you. (p. 156)

In talking with another person we have ideas that do not occur when we are alone at our desk. Some of what we say may be borrowed from what the…

An audience is a neglected, independent variable. What one says is determined in a very important way by the person one is talking to. (p. 156)

Learning to enjoy good literature is essentially learning to read for longer and longer periods of time before coming upon a moving passage—a passage all the more moving for having…

Reinforcers need not occur too frequently if we are fortunate enough to have been reinforced on a good schedule. (p. 155

... I have been wallowing in reminiscence lately in writing my autobiography. The trouble is that it takes you backward. You begin to live your life in the wrong direction.…

I have been guilty of . . . name-dropping myself when other reinforcers were in short supply . . . (p. 154)

... it is a mistake to say that we suffer from feelings. We suffer from the defective contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the feelings. (p. 154)

When the occasion for strong behavior is lacking or when reinforcing consequences no longer follow, we are bored, discouraged, and depressed. (p. 154)

The totalitarian state begins perhaps by merely restricting the control of the agencies under it, but it can eventually usurp their functions. (Skinner, 1953, p. 443)

Creative verbal behavior is not produced by exercising creativity; it is produced by skillful self-management. (p. 153)

"One of the more disheartening experiences of old age is discovering that a point you have just made—so significant, so beautifully expressed—was made in something you published a long time…

"I could have doubled my readership by calling this article “Cognitive Self-Management in Old Age.” Cognitive means so many things that it could scarcely fail to apply here. But I…

When I find myself saying “damn,” I know it is time to relax. (p. 151)

Old age is like fatigue, except that its effects cannot be corrected by relaxing or taking a vacation. (p. 150)

If the stages in our lives were due merely to the passage of time, we should have to find a fountain of youth to reverse the direction of change, but…

Much of what seems to be the unfolding of an inner potential is the product of an unfolding environment: A person’s world develops. The aging of a person as distinct…

In accepted usage, to develop is not simply to grow older but to unfold a latent structure, to realize an inner potential, to become more effective. (pp. 145-146)

"Developmentalism is a branch of structuralism in which the form, or topography, of behavior is studied as a function of time." (p. 145)

"As in any application of a behavioral analysis, the secret of successful verbal self-management is understanding what verbal behavior is all about." (p. 143)

"Samuel Butler’s comment that “a hen is simply an egg’s way of making another egg” holds for the human egg as well and for the poet." (p. 140)

"In a paper called “On ‘Having’ a Poem,” I compared a poet to a mother. Although the mother bears the child and we call it her child, she is not…

"I once gave what was supposed to be the same lecture to fifteen audiences. I used a good many slides that served as an outline, but I began to abbreviate…

"I once used E. G. Boring’s The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness as an instrument of self-management. I disagreed so violently with the author’s position that after reading a page or…

"Reading what somebody else has said about you sometimes strengthens behavior, since one is seldom at loss for words in a warm discussion." (p. 138)