Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Eventually the question was asked, why had I not answered Chomsky? . . . No doubt I was shirking a responsibility in not replying to Chomsky, and I am glad…

. . . Chomsky’s review began to be widely cited and reprinted and became, in fact, much better known than my book. (p. 391)

Let me tell you about Chomsky. I published Verbal Behavior in 1957. In 1958 I received a 55-page typewritten review by someone I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky.…

I intend to raise the question of whether I am responsible for what I am saying, whether I am actually originating anything, and to what extent I deserve credit or…

A person who, as we say, lives for art, for whom art is the most important thing in the world, is not so much one who finds art reinforcing as…

Mutation must . . . be followed by selection . . . The picture eventually left on the canvas is only one product of the combined processes of mutation and…

We may not like to credit any aspect of a successful painting to chance, but, if we are willing to admit that chance does make a contribution, we can take…

The word “origin” in The Origin of Species is important, for the book is essentially a study of originality. The multiplicity of living forms is accounted for in terms of…

Novelty or originality can occur in a wholly deterministic system. A convenient archetypal pattern is the theory of evolution. The living forms on the earth show a variety far beyond…

For Koestler a behavioral analysis of creativity is not only impossible but ludicrous, since novelty cannot arise in a “mechanistic” system. A creative mind must be at work. But a…

The very assignment of producing a creative artist may seem contradictory. How can behavior be original or creative if it has been “produced”? Production presupposes some form of external control,…

Learning the techniques of others does not interfere with the discovery of techniques of one’s own. On the contrary, the artist who has acquired a variety of techniques from his…

It is not true that if we fill the student’s head with facts he will be unable to think for himself. He is not damaged by facts but only by…

When teachers abandoned older forms of discipline, they lost control, and to the extent that they have not found suitable substitutes, it is quite correct to say that they can…

The history of art is to a large extent the history of what artists and viewers have found reinforcing. Universality is the universality of reinforcing effects. Changes in fashion come…

... when free of powerful reinforcers, we are simply more vulnerable to weak ones. Leisure brings the artist under the control of inconspicuous reinforcers. (p. 381)

Pictures are by definition reinforcing in the sense that they are responsible for the fact that artists paint them and people look at them. (p. 381)

The word “reinforcing,” though technical, is useful as a rough synonym for “interesting,” “attractive,” “pleasing,” and “satisfying,” and all these terms are commonly applied to pictures. For our present purposes…

. . . if we can discover the reinforcers which are contingent upon the artist’s behavior when he paints a picture, and upon the behavior of others when they look…

Artists paint pictures because of the consequences, and people look at pictures because of the consequences. (pp. 380-381)

If art springs from an inner life which is truly original, in the sense that it begins with the artist, then there is nothing to be done beyond giving the…

When [artists] talk about their emotions, thoughts, ideas, and impulses, they necessarily use a vocabulary that they have learned from people who have had no contact with these things and…

Why, indeed, do artists paint pictures? The traditional answers are not very helpful. They refer to events supposedly taking place inside the artist himself . . . They represent the…

We usually know why people behave as they do when they “have” to do so, but less compelling reasons are usually less obvious. They exist, however, and if we are…

We are living in an age in which science fiction is coming true. The thrilling spectacle of man-made satellites has turned our eyes toward outer space. What we shall find…

If we are to make a study of behavior sufficiently reinforcing to hold the interest of young men in competition with inner mechanisms, we must make clear that behavior is…

Under the influence of a contrary philosophy of explanation, which insists upon the reductive priority of the inner event, many brilliant men who began with an interest in behavior, and…

In an acceptable explanatory scheme the ultimate causes of behavior must be found outside the organism. (p. 371)

Experimental psychology has suffered perhaps its greatest loss of manpower because competent investigators, beginning with a descriptive interest in behavior, have passed almost immediately to an explanatory preoccupation with what…

Mathematics will come into its own in the analysis of behavior when appropriate methods yield data which are so orderly that there is no longer any need to escape to…

The psychologist who adopts the commoner statistical methods . . . is inclined to rest content with rough measures of behavior because statistics shows him how to “do something about…

For more than a generation, however, our graduate schools have been building psychologists on a different pattern of Man Thinking. They have taught statistics in lieu of scientific method. Unfortunately,…

The very success of a science may force it to become preoccupied with smaller and smaller details, which cannot compete with broad new issues. The philosophical motivation of the pioneers…

When we have studied the performances generated by various contingencies of reinforcement in a single arbitrary response, we can move on to two or more concurrent responses. Instead of one…

I propose to analyze the behavior of psychologists. Why are they not currently developing the pure science of human behavior from which such tremendous technological advances would certainly flow? How…

Very little current research is reported in the frame of reference of a comprehensive theory. Nor has the point of view of an experimental analysis yet reached far afield. Many…

The principles of an experimental analysis are now being extended to the field of verbal behavior, and it is inconceivable that the results will not be used to improve instructional…

We do not really explain “disturbed behavior” by attributing it to “anxiety” until we have also explained the anxiety. The extra step required is in the spirit of an experimental…

It is possible that theories of behavior derived from the clinic or from field studies, rather than from the laboratory, are on the wane. A strict Freudian psychology, for example,…

Given unlimited power it is possible that we should all become selfish monsters. (p. 334)

Fortunately, there are those who are inclined to do something about the mistreatment of children, the aged, prisoners, psychotics, and retardates. We say that they care, but it is important…

It would be difficult for a normal child to develop normally under many forms of institutional care. (p. 333)

Compassion will not explain action until the compassion has in turn been explained. (p.331)

When someone mistreats us, we may feel angry or enraged, but if we call him bad and his behavior wrong or take more effective action, it is not because of…

The close check with reality characteristic of experimental analysis would be most likely to expose the fictional entities which had played so devastating a role in what passed for psychological…

. . . the special control of variables attainable only in laboratory experimentation would ultimately supply the account which, being in closest accord with the actual properties of the human…

After all, it was the same man who was of interest to psychologists, political scientists, theologians, psychotherapists, economists, educators, literary critics, and scientific methodologists. Why should there be a different…

If the history of science were any guide, an effective psychology would eventually develop a central conception of human behavior which not only would be fundamentally “right” in the sense…

We cannot remedy the situation by mere dialectic. We need to arrive at a theory of human behavior which is not only plausible, not only sufficiently convincing to be “sold”…

There are facts which have been well established for centuries which are incompatible with the traditional theories of human behavior, and these theories move about in the modern world in…