B. F. Skinner

The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.

No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.

The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.

Behavior used to be reinforced by great deprivation; if people weren't hungry, they wouldn't work. Now we are committed to feeding people whether they work or not. Nor is money as great a reinforcer as it once was. People no longer work for punitive reasons, yet our culture offers no new satisfactions.

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

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.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.

Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful.

Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?

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.

A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.