B. F. Skinner Quotes

The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... a man may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.

When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.

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.

Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word 'admire' then means 'marvel at.'

The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.

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?

Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.