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

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

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.

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

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.

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

The consequences of an act affect the probability of it's occurring again.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.

I don't think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.

I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They're not creating it; they're not initiating anything. It's all found somewhere else. That's an awful lot to relinquish.

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.

I'm very pessimistic.

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

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?

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

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

Reinforcement is being right.

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

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

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.

We have not yet seen what man can make of man.

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.

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

To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.

If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.

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.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

I wouldn't change Buffy for anything and I wouldn't change the course in which she has evolved but it is nice to be able to do something that is a little different.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.

I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.

Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.