American psychologist BF Skinner is also a social philosopher and behaviorist, who mostly explored the behavior of humans and its cause.
BF Skinner firmly believed that free will does not exist and people are shaped the way they are because of their past experiences. Also, the way an individual reacts to a situation is dependent not only on their past but also on the current actions they are facing.
BF Skinner's in-depth study of behavior led him to establish several theories like the principle of reinforcement and experimental analysis of behavior and the widely talked-about operant conditioning. All these concepts are mutually dependent.
Added to these, he stressed how important it is to learn control or else we may open up avenues for other people to treat us in the wrong way. All our lives, we are conditioned to believe that we must blame our failure on being born a certain way.
He clarified it is not our birth but the situations we face that make us the way we are. So, let's learn a bit about these concepts through his quotes!
Famous BF Skinner Quotes
Read some of the most striking quotes by BF Skinner!
"Society attacks early when the individual is helpless."
-BF Skinner.
"It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on."
-BF Skinner.
"A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies."
-BF Skinner.
"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement."
-BF Skinner.
"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."
- BF Skinner, 'New Methods And New Aims In Teaching', 'New Scientist', May 21, 1964.
"The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion."
-BF Skinner.
"Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes."
-BF Skinner.
"I loved my father dearly. He was fantastically devoted and affectionate. But perhaps the stories about me would never have started if he had done a better job with his public image."
-BF Skinner.
"I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them."
-BF Skinner.
"...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake."
-BF Skinner.
"In my early experimental days, it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate."
-BF Skinner.
"Our memories work that way; we retain the facts which are easiest to think about."
-BF Skinner.
"No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way."
-BF Skinner.
"The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man."
-BF Skinner.
BF Skinner Quotes On Love And Control
Having control over ourselves and our feelings is a great achievement. Let's learn how!
(BF Skinner was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences for his excellent work)
"What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa."
-BF Skinner.
"You can't buy love with gifts or favors, you can't hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can't be secure in love by serving as a good scrubwoman or a good provider."
-BF Skinner.
"We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at'."
-BF Skinner.
"We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression."
-BF Skinner.
"The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again."
-BF Skinner.
"I've had only one idea in my life – a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible – the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior."
-BF Skinner.
"But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force."
-BF Skinner.
"The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount."
-BF Skinner.
BF Skinner Quotes On Child Development, Human Behavior, And Education
In this section, let's have a look at the main concepts that BF Skinner dealt with!
"The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called 'conditioning'. In operant conditioning, we 'strengthen' an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent."
- BF Skinner, 'Beyond Freedom And Dignity'.
"Behavior is determined by its consequences."
-BF Skinner.
"We could double the efficiency of education with one change alone—by letting each student move at his or her own pace."
-BF Skinner.
"A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it."
-BF Skinner.
“A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process."
-BF Skinner.
"Many instructional arrangements seem 'contrived', but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life."
-BF Skinner.
"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything."
-BF Skinner.
"Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions."
-BF Skinner.
"That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior."
-BF Skinner.
"A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment."
- BF Skinner, 'Beyond Freedom And Dignity'.
"It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds."
-BF Skinner.
"A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process."
- BF Skinner, 'Walden Two', 1974.
"An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin."
-BF Skinner.
"In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomous in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can, therefore, be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view, together with its associated practices, must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment."
-BF Skinner.
"A good program of instruction guarantees a great deal of successful action. Students do not need to have a natural interest in what they are doing, and subject matters do not need to be dressed up to attract attention."
-BF Skinner.
"No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out."
-BF Skinner.
"Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior."
-BF Skinner.
"Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?"
-BF Skinner.
"It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled."
-BF Skinner.
BF Skinner Quotes on Life
A psychologist of such stature, BF Skinner has a unique outlook on life. Read on to know his views!
"I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is."
-BF Skinner.
"The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about."
-BF Skinner.
"If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment."
-BF Skinner.
"Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least."
-BF Skinner.
"At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved."
-BF Skinner.
"If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that's necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom."
-BF Skinner.
"A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting."
-BF Skinner.
"Some of us learn control more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way."
-BF Skinner.
"Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value."
-BF Skinner.
"The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for. The rest is a day-to-day enjoyment of life."
-BF Skinner.
"Men build society and society builds men."
-BF Skinner.
"The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all."
-BF Skinner.
"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."
-BF Skinner.
"I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die."
-BF Skinner.
