On January 4, 2016, the B. F. Skinner Foundation launched a new project – Skinner’s Quote of the Day. Quotes from B. F. Skinner’s works, selected by renowned scientists, appear daily Monday-Friday in order, starting with Chapter 1 of each book and running all the way through the last chapter. We started with the Science and Human Behavior (January-December 2916), followed by About Behaviorism (January-November 2017), Contingencies of Reinforcement (January-October 2018), Recent Issues (October 2018-May 2019), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (May 2019-February 2020), and now moving on to Upon Further Reflection (from February 10 2020).
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"In Pavlov’s experiment a hungry dog hears a bell and is then fed. If this happens many times, the dog begins to salivate when it hears the bell. The standard…
"Cognitive psychologists study [the] relations between organism and environment, but they seldom deal with them directly. Instead they invent internal surrogates which become the subject matter of their science." (p.…
"The variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the environment." (p. 97)
"It is clear that the behavioral sciences have not yet fulfilled their promise . . . The fault lies, I am arguing, with the surviving mentalism. The sooner we abandon…
"Such a [behaviorist] program does not rob people of their feelings. It simply puts feelings in their proper place, and in doing so moves more rapidly to the kind of…
"It is safe to call for changes in feelings and states of mind precisely because nothing will ever happen for which one can be held responsible." (p. 92)
"Call it [behavior analysis] a superficial analysis if you will, but to turn instead to the minds of men, no matter how deeply implanted they may be, is to abandon…
"A research document published by the International Peace Research Association elaborates upon a famous statement issued by UNESCO many years ago: “Wars begin in the minds of men: hence it…
"Confidence is only one of hundreds of terms referring to feelings or states of mind which come to us naturally and conveniently in daily discussions of human behavior but which…
"The democratic process works when it makes a difference whether people participate or not." (p. 89)
"As a behaviorist, I do not blush to say that I am at this moment possessed by a number of different feelings of confidence... But I hasten to point out…
"Evidence of the powerful control exerted by the environment is obtained only through rather subtle scientific practices and is by no means as immediate or as obvious as the evidence…
"A science of behavior . . . turns to the environment—the environment that has produced the genetic endowment . . . and that now shapes and maintains the repertoire of…
"It is not so much the complexity of human behavior that causes trouble as the traditional practice of looking for explanations inside the behaving person." (p. 85)
"... those who make the decisions to spend money—for example, in education—are most often unaware of what can be done." (p. 85)
"It is easy to understand why the question should be asked: “When shall we have the behavioral science and technology we need to solve our problems?” I believe that that…
"With the technologies of physics and biology the species has solved problems of fantastic difficulty. Yet with respect to its own behavior something always seems to go wrong." (pp. 83-84)
"I wish to testify that, once you are used to it, the way [to a science of behavior] is not so steep or thorny after all." (p. 82)
"Much remains to be done, and it will be done more rapidly when the role of the environment takes its proper place in competition with the apparent evidences of an…
"The role of the environment has become clearer in the present century. Its selective action in evolution has been examined by the ethologists, and a similar selective action during the…
"We are not yet ready to accept the fact that the task is to change, not people, but rather the world in which they live." (p. 81)
"The science I am discussing is the investigation of the relation between behavior and the environment—on the one hand, the environment in which the species evolved and which is responsible…
"In the long run, the aggrandizement of the individual jeopardizes the future of the species and the culture." (p. 80)
"The practical problem in continuing the struggle for freedom and dignity is not to destroy controlling forces but to change them ..." (p. 80)
"... Louis Pasteur, was responsible for a dramatic test of the theory of spontaneous generation, and I suggest that the spontaneous generation of behavior in the guise of ideas and…
"The success of [the struggle for freedom], though it is not yet complete, is one of man’s great achievements, and no sensible person would challenge it. Unfortunately, one of its…
"... if the credit due a person is infringed by evidence of the conditions of which his behavior is a function, then a scientific analysis appears to be an attack…
"Plato would have made far more progress toward the good life if he could have forgotten those shadows on the wall of his cave." (pp. 77-78)
"Many years ago I suggested that the letters CNS could be said to stand, not for the central nervous system, but for the conceptual nervous system." (p. 74)
"Even when helpful, an observed or hypothetical inner determiner is no explanation of behavior until it has itself been explained, and the fascination with an inner life has allayed curiosity…
"To put it crudely, introspection cannot be very relevant or comprehensive because the human organism does not have nerves going to the right places." (pp. 72-73)
"The verbal community which teaches us to make distinctions among things in the world around us lacks the information it needs to teach us to distinguish events in our private…
"... I am not willing to give introspection much of a toehold ... , for there are two important reasons why we do not discriminate precisely among our feelings and…
"I welcome the view, clearly gaining in favor among psychologists and physiologists and by no means a stranger to philosophy, that what we introspectively observe, as well as feel, are…
"In short, the bodily conditions we feel are collateral products of our genetic and environmental histories. They have no explanatory force; they are simply additional facts to be taken into…
"We both strike and feel angry for a common reason, and that reason lies in the environment." (p. 71)
"Very little biology is handicapped by the fact that the biologist is himself a specimen of the thing he is studying, but that part of the science with which we…
"There will be certain temporal gaps in such an analysis [of behavior in terms of contingencies of reinforcement]. The behavior and the conditions of which it is a function do…
"[We do not] need to consider anatomy and physiology in order to see how the behavior of the individual is changed by his exposure to contingencies of reinforcement during his…
"We know something about the chemical and electrical effects of the nervous system and the location of many of its functions, but the events that actually underlie a single instance…
"I must begin by saying what I take a science of behavior to be. It is, I assume, part of biology. The organism that behaves is the organism that breathes,…
"... nothing less than a vast improvement in our understanding of human behavior will prevent the destruction of our way of life of mankind." (p. 68)
"What is needed is not a new political leader or a new kind of government but further knowledge about human behavior and new ways of applying that knowledge to the…
"The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a…
"The great men who are said to have made a difference in human affairs—Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, the scholars and scientists of the Revival of Learning, the leaders of the Enlightenment,…
"It has been argued that the solution might be socialism, but it has often been pointed out that socialism, like capitalism, is committed to growth, and hence to overconsumption and…
"In America we almost instinctively move to change things by political action: we pass laws, we vote for new leaders. But a good many people are beginning to wonder. They…
"Indeed, it might be argued that if America were to convert to a network of small communities, our economy would be wrecked. But something is wrong when it is the…
"In spite of our lip service to freedom, we do very little to further the development of the individual. How many Americans can say that they are doing the kinds…