B. F. Skinner

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?

If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

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.

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

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

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

I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of it.

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

I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.

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

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.

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

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.