- We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
- Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
- 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.
- The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
- No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.
- A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
- 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.
- We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.
- What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
- The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
10 inspirational b.f. skinner quotes on success
