"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."
"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything."
"Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful."
"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."
"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless."
"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."
"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading."
"If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment."
"The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again."
"The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount."
"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."
"When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it."
"The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry."
"We have not yet seen what man can make of man."
"Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people's daily lives with a sense of achievement."
"No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been."
"I'm very pessimistic."
"Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful."
"I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me."
"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?"
"The environment shapes people's actions."
"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."
"I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was still somewhat bothered by... worried... about religion. I remember going to this professor of philosophy and telling him that I had lost my faith."
"I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills."
"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."
