B. F. Skinner

Perceptual responses which clarify stimuli and resolve puzzlement may automatically reinforcing. ‘Getting the meaning’ of a difficult passage is similar.

B. F. Skinner

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli.

B. F. Skinner

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

B. F. Skinner

Reinforcement is being right.

B. F. Skinner

Religions work for their own aggrandizement – strengthen the church and so on – and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.

B. F. Skinner

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

B. F. Skinner

Science is human behavior, and so is the opposition to science.

B. F. Skinner

Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.

B. F. Skinner

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

B. F. 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.

B. F. Skinner